This to avoid e.g., issue of search "Sus" looking for boar but retrieving the endings of many other names.

as discussed with @n8upham -

" Suggest to update your USNM catalog references to include the Mammals collectionCode explitly in the form of USNM:Mammals:142172 instead of USNM 142172 . "

related supporting evidence -

$ preston cat --remote https://linker.bio/ 'line:zip:hash://sha256/0095d0c426ad1efc5eaa840070552d0be29ff0603e092d99206a55cc410e0994!/occurrence.txt!/L6709374'

http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/3f17abf51-a4c7-4e6f-b967-e173a2c558a9	PhysicalObject	http://biocol.org/urn:lsid:biocol.org:col:34871	USNM	Mammals	PreservedSpecimen	http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/3f17abf51-a4c7-4e6f-b967-e173a2c558a9	142172.7250998		4252	W. Abbott	1	Male	Adult	Skin; Skull; Partial Skeleton; Anatomical					180	180	1905	6	29	29 Jun 1905					Asia, Indonesia, Kalimantan Barat, Borneo	Asia			Borneo	Indonesia	Kalimantan Barat		Pontianak, Landak River [= Sungai Landak], Sungei Nya (Naja) [= Sungai Naya]						Type	Hylobates muelleri abbotti	Animalia, Chordata, Vertebrata, Mammalia, Eutheria, Primates, Haplorrhini, Hylobatidae	Animalia	Chordata	Mammalia	Primates	Hylobatidae	Hylobates		muelleri	abbotti	subspecies	

and as they related to slack message:

neat to see that you are keeping track of holotype voucher specimen also. E.g., USNM 142172 for Hylobates abbotti https://www.mammaldiversity.org/explore.html#species-id=1000727 . Did you consider linking the specimen to the Smithsonian (or other) catalogs ?

Thanks for all your work on a great resource, but I have a suggestion that I think your be useful for many.

At the moment you have the option of exploring the taxonomy from order level, searching the whole database for a species, or accessing a specific item on a species. It would be helpful if the explore taxonomy and search pages could be seeded with values. The way the anchor is parsed for the species-id parameter in the post hash section could be extended to supply other parameters.

A search (or filter) parameter could be used to initialise the "filter" text in the search box. In this way a link with https://www.mammaldiversity.org/explore.html#search=Felis would generate the list of cats in this genus.

The explore taxonomy page could have parameters to expand the orders, families, and genus. So a link with https://www.mammaldiversity.org/taxa.html#order=carnivora would open up and display the families in the order. Similarly a link with https://www.mammaldiversity.org/taxa.html#family=felidae would open up and display the genera in the cat family. And then https://www.mammaldiversity.org/taxa.html#genus=Felis would open up to show the Felis species.

These options would enable links to verify information about specific taxa. This was possible in the original version and I wrote a Wikipedia template for making such citations. These are now dead links, which doesn't help encourage people to use this database for citations, something I've being trying to promote.

I think these suggestions should be quite easy to implement from what I see in the code. I did make a fork to try and do this but I found the Github infrastructure too confusing. I think that the suggestions would be helpful for users and also help promotion of the use of the database by allowing exact citations for the taxonomy rather than just species entities.

I spent a bit of time recently cleaning up the "continentDistribution" and "biogeographicRealm" columns. I fixed most of the obvious issues, but there's room for more clarification. We probably won't have time soon to dive deep into this area, so I'll just write up some thoughts here.

Definitions

The MDD defines its biogeographic realms based on a map in Wikipedia/Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ecozones.svg. However, this is of course editable by anyone, and if you look at the history, there have been a few changes recently. For example, someone moved the Sulawesi area from Indomalaya to Australasia and someone else moved Fiji and Vanuatu from Australasia to Oceania. The map is also not supported by any citations. I don't think any part of the map is necessarily wrong, but it would be better for MDD to adopt its own definitions that don't rely on an external map that keeps changing. I also have some nitpicks with a few of the specific boundaries; see below.

MDD already uses its own definitions for the continents, which is good.

Indomalaya/Australasia boundary (realms) and Asia/Oceania boundary (continents)

Our current definitions place the realm boundary between Indomalaya and Australasia at Wallace's Line, meaning that Indomalaya contains the Sunda Shelf and the Philippines, and Australasia contains Sulawesi, the Lesser Sunda Islands, and the Moluccas. However, the continent boundary between Asia and Oceania is at Weber's line, which is between Sulawesi and the Moluccas. Therefore, the Wallacea area (Sulawesi and the Lesser Sundas) is in the continent of Asia but the realm of Australasia:

The two different boundaries are sort of helpful in that they emphasize the taxa that occur in Wallacea, but I'd prefer to make that explicit. For example, we could add Wallacea as a separate biogeographic realm, or add subregion distributions within Indonesia.

Australasia and Oceania

The latest release mostly uses "Australasia/Oceania" as a realm and "Oceania" as a continent. The source map on Wikipedia separates "Australasia" from "Oceania" and the slash feels awkward, so I recently made a change to separate "Australasia" from "Oceania" as separate realms. This restricts Oceania to only the remote islands of the Pacific (e.g., Fiji and Hawaii), with very few native mammals.

Now there's a new problem: the definitions of Oceania the continent and Oceania the biogeographic realm are different, because the continent includes Australia, New Guinea, and nearby islands, but the biogeographic realm does not. To fix this I would recommend to also add Australasia as a continent. If we also adjust the boundary with Asia (above section), "Australasia" would mean the same thing in the continent and realm columns, which is good.

Palearctic/Indomalaya boundary

The Wikipedia map places the boundary between the Palearctic and Indomalayan regions approximately as follows: from western Pakistan through India along the southern margins of the Himalayas, then into southern China, with approximately the Yangtze River as the boundary. The map has a long bulge of Palearctic in China south of the northernmost Indomalayan area. Taiwan contains both Indomalaya (lowlands) and Palearctic (mountains in the east). The Ryukyu Islands appear to be mostly Palearctic but it's hard to see them.

In practice MDD tends to favor putting things in the Palearctic. I moved a lot of South Asian species that live in the lowland parts of India into Indomalaya, but there are also a lot of species from South China that are currently placed in the Palearctic but probably should be in Indomalaya.

I would favor putting Taiwan fully in Indomalaya, since its mammal fauna as far as I can tell is mostly Indomalayan, though there are some Palearctic elements. I don't have strong feelings on exactly where the boundary should be within mainland China, but I don't think the exact boundary in the Wikipedia map is very defensible.

Palearctic/Afrotropic boundary

The Wikipedia map places this boundary first on a straight line through the Sahara (looks like about 20°N), passing through Mauritania, Mali, Algeria, and Niger, then a little further south in Chad, then a little further north at the Egypt/Sudan boundary. The Arabian peninsula is also in the Afrotropic, with the boundary some way further north in a straight line passing through Saudi Arabia. That means Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Bahrain, and Qatar are fully in the Afrotropic. A small area of coastal southern Iran is also in the Afrotropic.

Some consequences:

• The country of Egypt is fully in the Palearctic region. It is mostly in the continent of Africa, except that the Sinai region is in Asia.
• The country of Yemen is fully in the Afrotropic region. The mainland is in Asia, but the island of Socotra is in Africa by the MDD's definition.

My thoughts:

• The Palearctic/Afrotropic boundary in the Sahara on the map looks very arbitrary, mostly following straight lines and country boundaries. For simplicity I'd favor defining the boundary to follow country boundaries exactly, placing the Western Sahara, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt fully in the Palearctic and everything else fully in the Afrotropic.
• Putting this much of the Arabian Peninsula in the Afrotropic feels wrong to me based on the mammal fauna, though definitely the southern coast has some African elements.
• I would not put any of Iran in the Afrotropic; among mammals I don't think there is a significant amount of African fauna, and practically it's easier to put the entire country in the Palearctic.

Nearctic/Neotropic boundary

Here the Wikipedia map places the boundary in the middle of Mexico, with much of the western and eastern coast in the Neotropic (almost reaching the southern tip of Texas in the east) and the north and the central highlands in the Nearctic. Elsewhere the southern tips of Florida and Baja California are in the Neotropic, as are all Caribbean islands.

I would prefer to put all of Baja and Florida in the Nearctic, both for simplicity and because I don't think either area has a lot of Neotropical elements in the mammal fauna.

In order to harmonize our databases better I am adding a "recently_extinct" category to Hesperomys. I noticed two possible issues with MDD's treatment of extinct species:

• Antillomys rayi is included in MDD, but it is not on the Red List and as far as I can tell there is no evidence it survived past 1500. (It probably did, like other oryzomyines from the Caribbean, but then why not also include Megalomys camerhegne?
• Archaeolemur edwardsi is included in MDD but is not on the Red List, and again I'm not aware of evidence it lived past 1500. The MDD account https://www.mammaldiversity.org/explore.html#genus=Archaeolemur&species=edwardsi&id=1000971 says "it is listed in MSW3 2005", but it isn't.
• Cordimus hooijeri, a species I named in 2014, was found in association with Rattus so we hypothesized that it survived past 1499, when the first European contact occurred on Bonaire. There have been some noises about this genus in the literature, but no formal revision. In particular, I'm not confident that this species is really related to the two other species we placed in the genus, from the Pleistocene of Curaçao. It is not on the Red List, but on the basis of your inclusion criteria it should be included. Ref: Zijlstra, J.S., McFarlane, D.A., Hoek Ostende, L.W. van den and Lundberg, J. 2014. New rodents (Cricetidae) from the Neogene of Curaçao and Bonaire, Dutch Antilles. Palaeontology 57(5):895-908. doi:10.1111/pala.12091

Create a "Higher Taxa" page for Order-->Family-->Genus with the counts/info for that to be created dynamically.

https://www.mammaldiversity.org/explore.html#1000009 loads ok, but https://www.mammaldiversity.org/explore.html#1000718 does not.

Pull request #53 fixes this issue. This issue was introduced last week in a recent refactoring.

You can see the error logs in the console display things like:

Uncaught TypeError: speciesData.originalNameCombination is null
    renderSpeciesPage https://www.mammaldiversity.org/js/filter.js:78
    populateSpeciesInfo https://www.mammaldiversity.org/js/filter.js:206
    populateSpeciesInfo https://www.mammaldiversity.org/js/filter.js:202
    loadSpeciesById https://www.mammaldiversity.org/js/filter.js:592
    loadMDD https://www.mammaldiversity.org/js/filter.js:587
    loadSpeciesById https://www.mammaldiversity.org/js/filter.js:591
    fillSpeciesInfo https://www.mammaldiversity.org/js/filter.js:597
    onclick https://www.mammaldiversity.org/explore.html#1000009:1

the root cause was that Jekyll sets null values to null, whereas the previous javascript library used to load csv files set null values to an empty string (e.g., "").

This is another instalment of comparing the extant mammal taxonomies in MDD and my Hesperomys database, using a spreadsheet kindly prepared by Connor. I'm accepting most of the changes, but there's a lot.

Chiroptera

Straightforward accepted changes:

• New mergers
  • Hipposideros sabanus -> H. doriae (was already merged in MSW 3, not sure why I had it as a species)
  • Miniopterus oceanensis -> M. orianae
  • Miniopterus propitristis -> M. tristis (not sure what these two splits were based on)
  • Nycteris vinsoni -> N. macrotis (I would suggest amending the MDD comment to cite primarily Monadjem et al., 2010, who justified the synonymy)
  • Platyrrhinus chocoensis -> P. dorsalis
  • Platyrrhinus nigellus -> P. umbratus
  • Nyctimene sanctacrucis -> N. major
  • Pteropus yapensis -> P. pelewensis
  • Rhinolophus paradoxolophus -> R. rex
  • Rhinolophus huananus -> R. siamensis
  • Rhinolophus kahuzi -> R. ruwenzorii
  • Rhinolophus cohenae, R. mabuensis, R. smithersi -> R. hildebrandtii
  • Rhinolophus gorongosae, R. rhodesiae -> R. simulator
  • Kerivoula bicolor -> K. pusilla
  • Murina silvatica -> M. ussuriensis
  • Myotis badius -> M. alticraniatus
  • Myotis oxygnathus -> M. blythii
  • Myotis hosonoi, M. ozensis, M. yesoensis -> M. ikonnikovi
  • Nyctalus velutinus -> N. plancyi
  • Plecotus wardi -> P. ariel
  • Plecotus begognae -> P. auritus
  • Laephotis botswanae -> L. angolensis
• New splits
  • Coelops hirsutus < C. robinsoni
  • Hipposideros antricola < H. ater
  • Hipposideros gentilis < H. pomona
  • Hipposideros poutensis < H. larvatus
  • Lyroderma < Megaderma
  • Artibeus intermedius < A. lituratus
  • Balionycteris seimundi < B. maculata (though I would cite Lim et al., 2017, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0179555, not an unpublished bachelor's thesis)
  • Chironax tumulus < C. melanocephalus
  • Pilonycteris < Rousettus
  • Pteropus ennisae < P. capistratus
  • Rhinolophus achilles < R. philippinensis
  • Rhinolophus alticolus < R. simulator
  • Rhinolophus andamanensis < R. affinis
  • Rhinolophus mcintyrei < R. arcuatus
  • Rhinolophus proconsulis < R. arcuatus
  • Rhinolophus chaseni < R. borneensis
  • Rhinolophus perditus < R. cornutus
  • Rhinolophus damarensis < R. darlingi
  • Rhinolophus tatar < R. euryotis
  • Rhinolophus hirsutus < R. macrotis
  • Rhinolophus morio < R. luctus
  • Rhinolophus nippon < R. ferrumequinum
  • Rhinolophus perniger < R. luctus
  • Histiotus colombiae < H. montanus
  • Kerivoula crypta, K. malpasi < K. hardwickii
  • Mimetillus thomasi < M. moloneyi
  • Myotis moluccarum < M. macropus
  • Myotis sibiricus < M. brandtii
  • Myotis alticraniatus < M. siligorensis
  • Myotis sowerbyi < M. siligorensis
  • Myotis arescens < M. chiloensis
  • Scotophilus colias < S. nigrita
  • Scotophilus nigritella < S. viridis
  • Scotophilus collinus < S. kuhlii
• New species
  • Molossus melini
  • Rhinolophus belligerator (missed it because the new species description is well-concealed)
  • Barbastella pacifica
  • Hypsugo stubbei
  • Murina jinchui
  • Murina liboensis
  • Murina rongjiangensis
  • Myotis hayesi
  • Myotis moratellii
  • Myotis pampa
  • Plecotus gobiensis
  • Glischropus meghalayanus
  • Neoromicia hlandzeni
• Other taxonomic changes
  • Myotis ricketti -> Myotis pilosus
• Spelling fixes
  • Miniopterus phillipsii -> phillipsi
  • Mormoops megalophyllus -> megalophylla (unambiguously a noun in apposition)
  • Cynopterus titthaecheileus -> titthaecheilus (titthaecheilus is the original, my mistake)
  • Ptenochirus jagori -> jagorii (jagorii is the original)
  • Rhinolophus ferrumequinus -> ferrumequinum (definitely a noun in apposition)
  • Murina loreliae -> M. lorelieae
  • Scotoecus albigulus -> S. albigula (better seen as a noun in apposition)
  • Scotophilus nigritus -> S. nigrita
• Omitted recently extinct species
  • Pteropus allenorum

Hipposideridae

Doryrhina vs. Hipposideros (-)

I have two species in Doryrhina, MDD has eight. The source (Foley et al., 2017) only had molecular data for one species (cyclops). I added the related African species (camerunensis) and you added another six Indo-Australian ones that are thought to be related. You wrote that you're planning to change this, so I'm going to keep this as is.

Hipposideros swinhoei vs. swinhoii (-)

I have swinhoii, MDD has swinhoei.

The original spelling is swinhoii. Most recent authors use swinhoei, but Hill (1963) among others used the original spelling.

Ref: Hill, J.E. 1963. A revision of the genus Hipposideros. Bulletin of the British Museum (Natural History) (Zoology)11(1):1-129.

AI: Confirm that this should change and publish it.

Hipposideros fasensis and H. parnabyi (+)

I had these as valid species following Helgen (2007), but he didn't provide strong evidence and the change doesn't seem to have been supported. I am moving them back to subspecies of H. wollastoni.

Ref: Helgen, K. M. 2007. A taxonomic and geographic overview of the mammals of Papua. In The Ecology of Papua, ed. A. J. Marshall and B. M. Beehler, Ecology of Indonesia Series, Vol. VI, Part 1 pp. 689–749. Singapore: Periplus Editions.

Hipposideros khasiana (+)

This was named in 2006, rather inadequately. I had it listed as valid anyway, but it's probably a nomen nudum since the holotype isn't unambiguously identified (ICZN Art. 16.4.1). I would recommend MDD mention it in the comments though.

Ref: Thabah, A., Rossiter, S.J., Kingston, T., Zhang, S.-y., Parsons, S., Mya, K.M., Zubaid, A. and Jones, G. 2006. Genetic divergence and echolocation call frequency in cryptic species of Hipposideros larvatus s.l. (Chiroptera: Hipposideridae) from the Indo-Malayan region. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 88(1):119-130. doi:10.1111/j.1095-8312.2006.00602.x

AI: Publish discussion of whether it's a nomen nudum.

Macronycteris vittata vs. vittatus (-)

I have vittata, MDD has vittatus. I think this one is straightforward: nycteris is feminine and vittatus is an adjective, so it should be vittata.

AI: Publish this.

Miniopteridae

Miniopterus arenarius (+)

MDD accepts this species, I have it within M. natalensis

Miniopterus is quite a mess. MDD cites Monadjem et al. (2013). It seems that there is a genetically distinct form from Ethiopia/Arabia that may or may not be the same as M. arenarius, which was described from Kenya. Most recent papers do tend to treat arenarius as a distinct species, so I'll follow suit.

Not sure if you've seen this recent paper with very comprehensive genetic coverage: Demos, T.C., Webala, P.W., Lutz, H.L., Kerbis Peterhans, J.C., Goodman, S.M., Cortés-Delgado, N., Bartonjo, M. and Patterson, B.D. 2019. Multilocus phylogeny of a cryptic radiation of Afrotropical long-fingered bats (Chiroptera, Miniopteridae). Zoologica Scripta 49(1):1-13. doi:10.1111/zsc.12388

Miniopterus eschscholtzii and M. blepotis (+)

These are part of the Asian segment of "Miniopterus schreibersii". MDD has these two as distinct, citing the HMW account; I lump them all in M. fuliginosus. This is all pretty arbitrary since the genetic data is still spotty; if Asian Miniopterus are anything like the African ones, there are a lot more than three species in this group. However, I'll accept the change.

Molossidae

Austronomus vs. Tadarida (+)

MDD recognizes this genus for Tadarida australis and T. kuboriensis; I don't.

Lots of generic rearrangements in the Molossidae. I am seeing several studies that found these species to be distant from the rest of Tadarida, so I'm accepting the change.

Chaerephon shortridgei (-)

MDD synonymizes this species with Mops (=Chaerephon) chapini, citing batnames.org, but the current version of https://batnames.org/genera/Mops lists shortridgei as a valid species.

Cheiromeles torquata vs. torquatus (+)

I have torquata, MDD has torquatus. I made this change because I assumed the name derives from Latin meles "badger", which is feminine, but I looked up the original description and it turns out it's from Greek μέλος "limb" instead. That's actually neuter, but we can safely treat the Latinized derivative meles as masculine instead and go back to torquatus.

Micronomus, Ozimops, and Setirostris (+)

MDD recognizes these as genera; I have them as subgenera of Mormopterus.

The source cited by MDD is Jackson & Groves (2015). They write (p. 7) that they don't believe in subgenera and have therefore raised all subgenera to genus rank. I disagree with that stance; I think subgenera are useful. However, the molecular evidence from Amador et al. (2016 or maybe 2018, doi:10.1007/s10914-016-9363-8) indicates that at least Mormopterus planiceps (subgenus Ozimops) is distantly related to the type species of the genus, M. jugularis. Micronomus and Setirostris haven't been included in phylogenetic studies with broad coverage, but I would expect them also to be distant from true Mormopterus so I'll accept the change.

Chaerephon vs. Mops

I recognize Chaerephon; MDD synonymizes it in Mops.

Quite an invasive change but all molecular studies I've seen are consistent in showing that the two genera are closely related and not reciprocally monophyletic. I will accept the change.

Molossus fluminensis and M. nigricans (+)

MDD accepts these newly proposed splits from Molossus rufus. The evidence is solid, but it seems to me that the oldest name for fluminensis is actually castaneus Geoffroy, 1805, from Paraguay. Loureiro et al. (2020) list this name as a synonym of M. rufus without comment. Molossus holosericus from Rio de Janeiro also seems like a senior synonym of fluminensis. I am going to provisionally use the names proposed by Loureiro et al. (2020) until this is confirmed though.

They do not show a map with exact ranges for the split species, but the supplement to the companion article https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352340920301700 has a list of material examined.

AI: Confirm and publish

Nyctinomus vs. Tadarida (-)

I accept the genus Nyctinomus for Tadarida aegyptiaca (and Nyctinomus thomasi, discussed next); MDD leaves it within Tadarida.

This is based on Benda et al. (2012). They do not cite any justification, but molecular data tends to show (e.g., Ammer et al., 2016) this species is not close to Tadarida teniotis (the type of Tadarida), so this change seems as justified as most of the other genus-level changes in Molossidae.

There's also a good argument to be made for recognizing the genus Rhizomops for Tadarida brasiliensis, but that one doesn't seem to have been formally proposed so far.

Ref: Benda, P., Faizolâhi, K., Andreas, M., Obuch, J., Reiter, A., Ševčík, M., Uhrin, M., Vallo, P. and Ashrafi, S. 2012. Bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera) of the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. Part 10. Bat fauna of Iran. Acta Societatis Zoologicae Bohemicae 76:163-582.

Nyctinomus thomasi (-)

I accept this species; MDD has no comments under Tadarida aegyptiaca.

My source is also Benda et al. (2012), who differentiated it from N. aegyptiacus based on a morphometric analysis and apparent sympatry between the two forms. I'd be willing to go back on this one if your judgment is that we need molecular data, but MDD should at least add a comment.

Tomopeas ravum vs. ravus (-)

MDD spells the species name ravus; I have ravum.

According to Palmer (1904:682), Tomopeas comes from Greek ὄπεας opeas "awl", which is neuter. The specific name, ravus, is a Latin adjective meaning "gray". So I think my version is grammatically correct. Whether it's worth disturbing the established name I'm not sure.

AI: Confirm and publish

Phyllostomidae

Anoura aequatoris and A. peruana (-)

MDD recognizes these species; I don't. Sounds like you're aware of the reasons and are about to synonymize them too.

Artibeus vs. Dermanura and Koopmania (-)

MDD recognizes Dermanura as a genus; I don't.

This keeps going back and forth. Given that everyone seems to agree that Artibeus + Dermanura is monophyletic, I'd prefer to stick to the more conservative option and keep them all in a single genus, but I'm willing to change this if recognition of Dermanura as a genus continues to be the majority opinion.

The same goes for Koopmania, except there the evidence that the genus is being accepted is weaker.

Gardnerycteris crenulata vs. crenulatum (-)

MDD has crenulatum, I have crenulata.

The generic name Gardnerycteris is clearly based on a truncation of "Gardner" + nycteris "bat", which is feminine. The specific epithet was actually first published as crenulata (in combination with Phyllostoma); the spelling crenulatum is a holdover from when the species was in Mimon (which is neuter).

AI: Publish

Lophostoma evote vs. evotis (-)

MDD has evotis, I have evote.

Lophostoma is a neuter name (that's why we have e.g. Lophostoma brasiliense). I interpret this epithet as a Latinized adjective based on Greek οὖς, ὦτος ear. Adjectives in -is usually have -e in the neuter; for example, Lampronycteris brachyotis was first named as Schizostoma brachyote. However, I can't entirely make sense of the word evotis (and the original authors don't explain). Maybe it's a compound with εὖ "good", but it's also possible that it's something unrelated to ears.

There is a similar case with the subspecies name laephotis, which I think should be laephote. Davis & Carter (1978) derives this term from Greek φῶς phôs "light", but I think that doesn't make sense and it's another -otis adjective.

AI: More research needed.

Vampyriscus nymphaeus vs. nymphaea (-)

MDD has nymphaea, I have nymphaeus.

This species was recently moved from feminine Vampyressa to masculine Vampyriscus. The specific epithet is an adjective (Greek νυμφαῖος nymphaios "of the nymphs"), so it should agree in gender with the genus name.

Pteropodidae

Desmalopex leucoptera and microleucoptera vs. leucopterus (-)

I have the two species as -ptera, MDD has -pterus.

As discussed previously under Lycalopex, this name is etymologically feminine. However, even the original description used the combination Desmalopex leucopterus, so a case could be made for sticking with the masculine forms.

Notopteris neocaledonica vs. neocaledonicus (-)

I have neocaledonica, MDD has neocaledonicus.

I think this one is ambiguous. The generic name derives from Greek πτερόν pteron "wing" in a Latinized form with a new ending -is. ICZN Art. 30.1.3 says that such names take the gender appropriate to their Latin ending, but -is words in Latin can be either masculine or feminine. The form neocaledonica appears to be the original spelling (though I haven't verified) and previous literature also uses that form, so it seems better to stick with it.

AI: Confirm and publish

Nyctimene minuta vs. N. varius (+/-)

MDD has Nyctimene varius, I have Nyctimene minuta.

I accept the taxonomic change to treat minutus as a synonym of albiventer and varius as a distinct species.

However, there's also a spelling issue: I use the forms minuta and varia. I interpret Nyctimene as based on Greek μήνη mene "moon", which is feminine. However, previous authors seem to have universally treated it as masculine.

AI: Confirm spelling changes

Pteropus gilliardi vs. gilliardorum (-)

MDD has gilliardorum, I have gilliardi.

The original spelling is gilliardi, but it was named after two Gilliards (husband and wife), so it was emended to gilliardorum and most authors have followed that emendation. However, my opinion is that such emendations are not permissible under the Code. Ref: Dubois, A. 2007. Genitives of species and subspecies nomina derived from personal names should not be emended. Zootaxa 1550(1):49-68. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.1550.1.2

This issue is going to come up a lot more in the rest of the list. I wouldn't recommend changing anything just yet. Perhaps the ASM Nomenclature Committee has an opinion here that we can follow more generally.

AI: Figure out a stance.

Pteropus loochoensis -> P. mariannus (+)

I have this as a valid species, MDD includes it in mariannus. The cited source provides no justification and Okinawa (where loochoensis is from) is a long way from the Marianas (where mariannus lives), so I'm a bit skeptical. However, the merger seems to be accepted in the community, so I'll take it.

Pteropus intermedius -> P. vampyrus (+)

I have this as valid, MDD includes it in vampyrus. MDD cites only Mlíkovský (2012), which doesn't say anything about intermedius. However, the HMW volume on bats also sinks this species, so I'll accept the synonymy.

Pteropus vetula vs. P. vetulus (+)

MDD has vetula, I have vetulus. MDD doesn't cite any source, but I found the spelling change in HMW. They claim that vetula is a noun in apposition and should remain unchanged. I looked at the original description, which calls it Pteropus Vetula, and they're probably right that Jouan meant it as a noun in apposition, since he never capitalizes adjectival epithets, but does capitalize (if consistently) nouns used as epithets. I'll accept the change, though I think a good case could be made to treat vetulus as a justified emendation by prevailing usage, since that spelling has been used consistently for over a century.

Pteropus natalis (-)

I have this as a valid species, you implicitly include it in Pteropus melanotus. My sources are James et al. (2007), a conservation report which claims that the revision that merged this species into P. melanotus was unjustified, and Jackson & Groves (2015), who follow suit but call for more taxonomic work. That's pretty thin and I'd be open to moving it back to a subspecies, but MDD should mention in comments that this form is sometimes recognized as valid.

Stenonycteris lanosa vs. lanosus (-)

MDD has lanosus, I have lanosa. This species was recently moved from masculine Rousettus to feminine Stenonycteris. I don't think there's much room for doubt that lanosus is an adjective.

AI: Confirm and publish

Styloctenium mindorense vs. mindorensis (-)

MDD has mindorensis, I have mindorense. This species was named (somewhat) recently with incorrect gender agreement.

AI: Confirm and publish

Rhinolophidae

Rhinolophus pumilus < R. cornutus (+)

Species in MDD, subspecies of R. cornutus for me. MDD cites Wu et al. (2012), but they treat pumilus as a junior synonym of cornutus (p. 402). However, HMW does recognize pumilus as valid and I'll follow suit.

Minor: MDD has a typo in the reference ("teh").

Rhinonycteridae

Paratriaenops furcula

Both databases agree but I noticed a mistake in the comment for this species. MDD says "generally spelt furculus, but the name has been changed to furcula to match the generic gender". But the Code specifically says that names in -ops are always masculine (Art. 30.1.4.3). The comment should say that furcula is correct because the name is a noun in apposition.

Vespertilionidae

Aeorestes/Dasypterus/Lasiurus (-)

MDD has Aeorestes and Dasypterus as valid genera; I have them within Lasiurus. This is another one that keeps changing back and forth. I'm keeping things unchanged for now but I can switch to three genera if the consensus goes that way.

Afronycteris nana vs. nanus (-)

I have nana, MDD has nanus. Afronycteris is feminine and I think the specific epithet is an adjective, so it should be nana.

However, this name was also spelled nanus when it was in Neoromicia, which is also feminine, so maybe I'm missing something.

AI: Confirm and publish.

Eptesicus guadeloupensis and E. lynni (+)

I have these as valid species, MDD lumps them with E. fuscus.

For E. guadeloupensis, MDD cites Yi & Latch (2022). I will follow the change, though I agree with your comments the species should perhaps be split up.

MDD does not discuss E. lynni; I have it as a species based on Genoways et al. (2005). However, it is the Jamaican representative of E. fuscus, and Yi & Latch (2022) show that Jamaican material nests within E. fuscus, so I will move it back to a subspecies.

Ref: Genoways, H.H., Baker, R.J., Bickham, J.W. and Phillips, C.J. 2005. Bats of Jamaica. Special Publications, Museum of Texas Tech University 48:1-154.

Eptesicus kobayashii -> E. pachyomus (+/-)

I have this species as valid. MDD comments say it is included in E. serotinus, but HMW puts it in E. pachyomus instead, which makes more geographical sense.

Glauconycteris curryi vs. G. curryae (-)

Another case like Pteropus gilliardi.

Myotis ancricola and M. annatessae (-)

I merge these two recently named species into M. nipalensis; MDD recognizes them as valid.

Ruedi et al. (2021), as cited by MDD, shows close genetic similarity between these two and M. nipalensis and suggests they are conspecific, but MDD retains them as distinct. It's definitely a borderline case, but it feels very similar to the half dozen African Rhinolophus (e.g. cohenae) that you synonymized based on similarly preliminary molecular data.

In addition, you synonymized a number of other Asian Myotis (M. badius, M. annamiticus, M. csorbai) based on similar levels of evidence from the same source. This feels inconsistent. I am following all the synonymies for now but it might be better to keep all these species until a more definitive taxonomic proposal.

Myotis australis (-)

I keep this dubious species, MDD sinks it in macropus. Sounds like you're about to change this back, so I'll hold off on changing it.

Myotis niasensis -> M. muricola (+)

I think I had this one as valid based on Kruskop & Borisenko (2012, the description of Myotis annatessae), who claim that it is probably specifically distinct. That's more than 10 years ago and nobody seems to have agreed with them, so I'm going to put it back in muricola for now. Given that the type locality of Myotis muricola is in Nepal there's a good chance this form will prove to belong to a different species though.

Myotis milleri -> M. evotis (+)

I have this as valid, MDD includes it in M. evotis following MSW 3. It is sometimes listed as a species (e.g. there's a Mammalian Species account) but the recent consensus seems against me, so I'll put it in evotis.

Neoromicia anchietae vs. N. anchieta (-)

MDD uses anchieta, the original spelling; I use anchietae.

This has been discussed in the literature and anchietae is considered a justified emendation:

• Grubb, P. 2004. Controversial scientific names of African mammals. African Zoology 39(1):91-109.
• Kock, D. 2001. Rousettus aegyptiacus (E. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, 1810) and Pipistrellus anchietae (Seabra, 1900), justified emendations of original spellings. Acta Chiropterologica 3(2):245-256.

Pipistrellus murrayi (+)

MDD splits this from P. tenuis. The cited source (Helgen et al. 2009) appears to be unpublished; I can't find it online. Perhaps better to cite Jackson & Groves (2015).

Plecotus christii vs. christiei (-)

I follow Benda et al. (2006:231) in using christii, the original spelling, while MDD uses christiei. This I suppose hinges on whether the emended form is in "prevailing usage"; I'd argue it's not since many authors now use christii, but it's a subjective decision.

Ref: Benda, P., Andreas, M., Kock, D., Lučan, R.K., Munclinger, P., Nová, P., Obuch, J., Ochman, K., Reiter, A., Uhrin, M. and Weinfurtová, D. 2006. Bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera) of the eastern Mediterranean. Part 4. Bat fauna of Syria: distribution, systematics, ecology. Acta Societatis Zoologicae Bohemicae 70:1-329.

Baeodon (-)

I recognize this genus, MDD sinks it in Rhogeessa, but apparently you're thinking of changing this.

Scotophilus borbonicus (-)

I have this species while MDD includes it in S. trujilloi. Re-reading the paper I don't see why they don't simply accept it as the senior synonym of trujilloi. It sounds like you're also considering changes here, so I'll hold off on any changes.

Arielulus torquatus vs. Thainycteris torquatus (-)

MDD puts this species in Thainycteris; I have it in Arielulus.

MDD cites Francis et al. (2010), who don't mention torquatus, and Guo et al. (2017), who list "Thainycteris torquatus" in a table header but provide no justification. Hassanin et al. (2017, description of Glauconycteris atra) and Görföl et al. (2020, description of Mirostrellus) present phylogenetic trees that include torquatus and Arielulus circumdatus, but not Thainycteris aureocollaris. They find torquatus to be sister to Arielulus circumdatus. That's not conclusive since aureocollaris wasn't included, but I don't see evidence to justify the change of generic assignment.

I started going over species where the MDD has a type specimen but Hesperomys does not. In many cases the MDD was correct, but I encountered some that seem incorrect:

• AMNHM-33876 (MDD) vs. (none) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1000575; Cercopithecus mona; original citation: Schreber (1774); type_specimen_missing_hesp)
  • I assume this means the AMNH, but AMNH 33876 is actually the type of Pithecia milleri (also listed as such in MDD). It's unlikely that there is a preserved type specimen for Cercopithecus mona.
  • Recommendation: remove type for Cercopithecus mona
• ANCW CM15216 [holotype], ANWC CM15216 [paratype], ANWC CM15217 [paratype], ANWC CM15237 [paratype], ANWC CM15219 [paratype], ANWC CM15243 [paratype] (MDD) vs. (none) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1000304; Petrogale persephone; type_specimen_missing_hesp)
  • I haven't seen the original description, but based on Google Books snippets it looks as if ANWC CM15216 is a paratype and the holotype is QM JM2548. It's listed as such on the QM's website: https://collections.qm.qld.gov.au/objects/VE110272/petrogale-persephone
  • Recommendation: change type of Petrogale persephone to QM JM2548.
• BM 329 [holotype] (MDD) vs. (none) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1000157; Neophascogale lorentzii; original citation: Jentink (1911); type_specimen_missing_hesp)
  • In the original description, 329 appears to be a field number; it's not a valid British Museum specimen number. The BMNH holds the types of two synonyms of this species, but I would expect Jentink's type to be in the RMNH. Haven't yet checked the RMNH database.
  • Edit: I found the type in the RMNH database, it's RMNH.MAM.36163
  • Recommendation: remove type for Neophascogale lorentzii (or figure out the right number in the RMNH database)
• BM ZD 1999.360 [neotype] (MDD) vs. (none) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1006432; Sousa chinensis; type_specimen_missing_hesp)
  • This one is arguable. Wang et al. (2015) rejected this neotype designation on technical grounds, and Jefferson and Rosenbaum (2014) previously pointed out some problems. Therefore, I chose to reject the neotype designation, but we could go the other way.
  • Jefferson, T.A. and Rosenbaum, H.C. 2014-10. Taxonomic revision of the humpback dolphins (Sousa s.), and description of a new species from Australia. Marine Mammal Science 30(4):1494-1541. doi:10.1111/mms.12152
  • Wang, J.Y., Yang, S.C. and Hung, S.K. 2015-12. Diagnosability and description of a new subspecies of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin, Sousa chinensis (Osbeck, 1765), from the Taiwan Strait. Zoological Studies 54(36):1-15. doi:10.1186/s40555-015-0115-x
  • Recommendation: remove type for Sousa chinensis
• CHAS:Mamm:713 (MDD) vs. (none) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1001858; Geomys bursarius; original citation: Shaw (1800); type_specimen_missing_hesp)
  • This is actually the type of a subspecies, Geomys bursarius illinoensis. According to my data there is no well-documented type for bursarius, but a specimen in the RMNH may be the type. Relatedly, CHAS is missing from the type specimen metadata file that comes with the MDD; it should be mapped to Chicago Academy of Sciences.
  • Recommendation: remove type for Geomys bursarius
• FMNH112348 (MDD) vs. (none) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1001964; Orientallactaga sibirica; type_specimen_missing_hesp)
  • This is the type of Allactaga firouzi, which I currently have as a subspecies of Scarturus hotsoni. The name sibirica is from 1778 and it's somewhat unlikely that there is an extant type.
  • Recommendation: remove type for Orientallactaga sibirica
• FMNH17062 (MDD) vs. (none) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1003033; Aethomys chrysophilus; original citation: de Winton (1897); type_specimen_missing_hesp)
  • This is the type of Mus voi Osgood, 1910, a synonym of Aethomys chrysophilus. I haven't located the type of chrysophilus but presumably it is in the BMNH.
  • Recommendation: remove type for Aethomys chrysophilus
• FMNH53956 (MDD) vs. (none) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1002686; Calomys callosus; type_specimen_missing_hesp)
  • This specimen was collected in 1944 and cannot be the holotype of Mus callosus Rengger, 1830. Hershkovitz wrote about the type of callosus "Not known to be in existence. The bulk of Rengger's Paraguayan collection was lost before it could be sent to Europe. It is possible, however, that a few specimens reached the natural history museum of Aarau, Switzerland."
  • Recommendation: remove type for Calomys callosus
• FMNH93856 (MDD) vs. (none) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1005952; Lupulella adusta; original citation: Sundevall (1847); type_specimen_missing_hesp)
  • This is the type of Canis adustus namrui, a subspecies. I have no data about the type of adusta, but some of Sundevall's other types ended up in the BMNH.
  • Recommendation: remove type for Lupulella adustus
• IBUNAM (CNMA) 7383 [neotype] (MDD) vs. (none) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1004912; Glossophaga morenoi; type_specimen_missing_hesp)
  • Discussed by Urbano Vidales & Sánchez-Herrera (1983:2). It's not clear who designated the neotype (possibly it was just marked as such in the collection?) and apparently the specimen is a Glossophaga soricina.
  • Urbano, G. and Sánchez-Herrera, O. 1983. Type specimens of mammals in the collection of the Institute of Biology, National University of Mexico. Occasional Papers, Museum of Texas Tech University 87:1-7. URL: http://www.realitat.com/websites/zoologia/zoo_08/cnma/archivos/mamiferos18.pdf
  • Recommendation: remove type for Glossophaga morenoi
• IBUNAM (CNMA) 9216 [neotype] (MDD) vs. (none) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1004916; Leptonycteris yerbabuenae; type_specimen_missing_hesp)
  • According to Urbano Vidales & Sánchez-Herrera (1983:3) this is a paratype; they cite and reject a previous paper that designated this specimen as the lectotype. I am not aware of a published reference that designates this specimen as the neotype.
  • Recommendation: remove type for Leptonycteris yerbabuenae

I am going over these alphabetically by collection number, so the MNHN is next; that'll probably keep me busy for a while.

For example, @jhpoelen just added such an endpoint to the Open Traits Network site, and folks were pretty enthusiastic about it. See open-traits-network/open-traits-network.github.io#109 (comment) .

Paper: Ramírez-Chaves, H.E., Alarcón Cifuentes, M., Noguera-Urbano, E.A., Pérez, W.A., Torres-Martínez, M.M., Ossa-López, P.A., Rivera-Páez, F.A. and Morales-Martínez, D.M. 2023-05-30. Systematics, morphometry, and distribution of Eptesicus fuscus miradorensis (H. Allen, 1866) (Chiroptera: Vespertilionidae), with notes on baculum morphology and natural history. Therya 14(2):299-311. doi:10.12933/therya-23-2290

Link: https://www.revistas-conacyt.unam.mx/therya/index.php/THERYA/article/view/299

Suggested change: Add Eptesicus miradorensis (H. Allen, 1866) as a species, encompassing some populations (Mexico to northern South America) that are currently in Eptesicus fuscus.

Additional references:

• Yi, X.-l. and Latch, E.K. 2022-06. Nuclear phylogeography reveals strong impacts of gene flow in big brown bats. Journal of Biogeography 49(6):1061-1074. doi:10.1111/jbi.14362

Comments: As we discussed at ASM, GitHub issues could be a good way to bring up new papers or other suggested changes to the MDD. I'll try this out for this paper and maybe some others I come across. If we like this format, we can set up some issue templates to make it easier to open the issue and standardize the format.

Now on to comments on the paper itself. This paper proposes recognizing the subspecies Eptesicus fuscus miradorensis as a species. I am not convinced, and in my database I plan to keep it as a subspecies for now (I'll make it a species if MDD decides to accept it). Ramírez-Chaves et al. (2023) use only mtDNA (Cytb and COI). E. f. miradorensis is sister to all of E. fuscus in the Cytb tree, but sister to just E. f. pallidus (western USA) in the COI tree. Yi & Latch (2022) also studied nuclear DNA and found a complex pattern of isolation and gene flow, but no especially distinctive position for E. f. miradorensis. Possibly more of the subspecies should be recognized as species, but to me the evidence looks more like a single species with a complex pattern of regional divergence.

I compared the higher classification (above the genus level) in MDD to my classification, mostly in order to find additional places where my classification is out of date. There were surprisingly many differences (6892, more than one per species on average), though many are explained by just a few underlying disagreements. For example, we use different names for the two suborders of bats. However, with some changes I made in my database, there is only one remaining difference at the level of order or family (Sicistidae vs. Sminthidae); all other differences affect only other ranks.

A common theme is that my classification adds additional levels that are only important for fossils. For example, within Proboscidea MDD recognizes one family Elephantidae and two genera Elephas and Loxodonta. I add suborder Elephantiformes, infraorder Elephantimorpha, subfamily Elephantinae, and tribes Elephantini and Loxodontini, which are useful because my classification also covers fossils, but they add little information to a classification that only covers extant mammals, so there's little reason for MDD to adopt them.

There are many other differences that I haven't fully looked into yet, including many cases where I add additional levels MDD doesn't recognize, and also many cases where we simply follow different classifications. The full list of differences, sorted into categories, is at https://gist.github.com/JelleZijlstra/da80f473e5f8ffa383bbcbc15ac20f7b.

I want to share two categories of differences: a few where I would recommend that the MDD make a change now, and a slightly larger group of purely nomenclatural differences that I should probably publish a paper about.

Recommend changes in MDD

• subfamily Sthenurinae (MDD) vs. Lagostrophinae (Hesperomys): 1 differences, e.g.:
  • Sthenurinae (MDD) vs. Lagostrophinae (Hesperomys) (MDD#1000318; Lagostrophus fasciatus; subfamily; higher_classification)
    • This paper showed that Lagostrophus is not part of the extinct Sthenurinae clade: Prideaux, G.J. and Warburton, N.M. 2010-07-26. An osteology-based appraisal of the phylogeny and evolution of kangaroos and wallabies (Macropodidae: Marsupialia). Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 159(4):954-987. doi:10.1111/j.1096-3642.2009.00607.x
• suborder None (MDD) vs. Erinaceota (Hesperomys): 564 differences, e.g.:
  • (none) (MDD) vs. Erinaceota (Hesperomys) (MDD#1003804; Atelerix albiventris; suborder; original citation: Wagner (1841); higher_classification)
• suborder None (MDD) vs. Solenodonota (Hesperomys): 10 differences, e.g.:
  • (none) (MDD) vs. Solenodonota (Hesperomys) (MDD#1003837; Atopogale cubana; suborder; higher_classification)
    • Recognition of these two suborders (Solenodonota for Solenodontidae + Nesophontidae, Erinaceota for Erinaceidae + Soricidae + Talpidae) represents the basal split within the order. Reference: Brace, S., Thomas, J.A., Dalén, L., Burger, J., MacPhee, R.D.E., Barnes, I. and Turvey, S.T. 2016-12. Evolutionary history of the Nesophontidae, the last unplaced Recent mammal family. Molecular Biology and Evolution 33(12):3095-3103. doi:10.1093/molbev/msw186
• subfamily Dolichinae (MDD) vs. Dolichotinae (Hesperomys): 2 differences, e.g.:
  • Dolichinae (MDD) vs. Dolichotinae (Hesperomys) (MDD#1001207; Dolichotis patagonum; subfamily; original citation: Zimmermann (1780); higher_classification)
    • Dolichotinae is the correct stem and the form used by the original author of the name; I have never seen Dolichinae in the literature. "Dolichinae" would also be preoccupied by a beetle tribe.
• family Prolagidae (MDD) vs. Ochotonidae (Hesperomys): 1 differences, e.g.:
  • Prolagidae (MDD) vs. Ochotonidae (Hesperomys) (MDD#1001183; Prolagus sardus; family; higher_classification)
    • Already discussed

Nomenclatural changes that need publication

• subfamily Hyladelphinae (MDD) vs. Hyladelphyinae (Hesperomys): 1 differences, e.g.:
  • Hyladelphinae (MDD) vs. Hyladelphyinae (Hesperomys) (MDD#1000137; Hyladelphys kalinowskii; subfamily; original citation: Hershkovitz (1992); higher_classification)
    • MDD follows the literature here, but I think Hyladelphyinae is technically the correctly formed name. ICZN Art. 29.4 doesn't apply here. This needs publication.
• subfamily Pseudochiropsinae (MDD) vs. Pseudochiropinae (Hesperomys): 6 differences, e.g.:
  • Pseudochiropsinae (MDD) vs. Pseudochiropinae (Hesperomys) (MDD#1000363; Pseudochirops albertisii; subfamily; original citation: Peters (1874); higher_classification)
    • There is inconsistency in how stems are formed for -ops names; I will have to look into it more.
• subfamily Rousettinae (MDD) vs. Epomophorinae (Hesperomys): 41 differences, e.g.:
  • Rousettinae (MDD) vs. Epomophorinae (Hesperomys) (MDD#1004513; Eonycteris major; subfamily; original citation: Andersen (1910); higher_classification)
    • Epomophorinae dates back to Gray 1866; Rousettinae only to Andersen 1912.
• subfamily Myadinae (MDD) vs. Mydainae (Hesperomys): 2 differences, e.g.:
  • Myadinae (MDD) vs. Mydainae (Hesperomys) (MDD#1005813; Mydaus javanensis; subfamily; original citation: Desmarest (1821); higher_classification)
• subfamily Taxidiinae (MDD) vs. Taxideinae (Hesperomys): 1 differences, e.g.:
  • Taxidiinae (MDD) vs. Taxideinae (Hesperomys) (MDD#1005880; Taxidea taxus; subfamily; original citation: Schreber (1778); higher_classification)
• subfamily Saimiriinae (MDD) vs. Saimirinae (Hesperomys): 8 differences, e.g.:
  • Saimiriinae (MDD) vs. Saimirinae (Hesperomys) (MDD#1000850; Saimiri boliviensis; subfamily; higher_classification)
• tribe Plagiodontini (MDD) vs. Plagiodontiini (Hesperomys): 5 differences, e.g.:
  • Plagiodontini (MDD) vs. Plagiodontiini (Hesperomys) (MDD#1001391; Plagiodontia aedium; tribe; higher_classification)
• subfamily Callosciurinae (MDD) vs. Nannosciurinae (Hesperomys): 73 differences, e.g.:
  • Callosciurinae (MDD) vs. Nannosciurinae (Hesperomys) (MDD#1001535; Callosciurus adamsi; subfamily; original citation: Kloss (1921); higher_classification)
• family Sminthidae (MDD) vs. Sicistidae (Hesperomys): 19 differences, e.g.:
  • Sminthidae (MDD) vs. Sicistidae (Hesperomys) (MDD#1001997; Sicista armenica; family; higher_classification)

Hi!

While I was working towards integrating MDD into Nomer globalbioticinteractions/nomer#141 , I noticed that:

https://www.mammaldiversity.org/explore.html?id=1004746

does not resolve, but

https://www.mammaldiversity.org/explore.html#genus=Rhinolophus&species=sinicus&id=1004746

does.

Is that intentional?

See also attached screenshots.

From @jhpoelen:

• Jekyll (and other page generators) plugins (or custom scripts) can be used to generate a single page per species if desired. Jekyll slang for this functionality is "generators" (see https://jekyllrb.com/docs/plugins/generators/) . However, as I mentioned earlier, this customization is not supported via Github pages, so would introduce some friction in the maintenance/deploy process.
• You can combine the single page with dynamics (css/javascript) to render images or additional information when taxa are selected, or hide rows that do not fit some search criteria.
• Single per-species pages are not absolutely necessary (e.g., instead links like https://mammaldiversity.org/#1234 ) can be used and dynamics can be introduced get the look 'n feel of a single page (e.g., hide other rows and show more information on selection). However, I can see, conceptually, that per-page species are easier to think about. But, ... please note the increased maintenance and deployment friction.
• For CSS / javascript techniques to build single page apps - I'd suggest to just search around for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-page_application : it is a well know architectural approach that has a ton of books, libraries etc built around it. Note that https://globalbioticinteractions.org uses the approach also.

          Thanks! It's inconsistent, but I sometimes get a 404 link to `https://www.mammaldiversity.org/explore.htmlgenus=Zaglossus&species=attenboroughi&id=1000003` (notice missing `?` after `explore.html`) if I go to "Search species", start typing "Zagl", and click one of the species. Sometimes it goes to this 404 link and sometimes it correctly shows the species account.

Originally posted by @JelleZijlstra in #24 (comment)

@liphardt @n8upham in a recent discussion, I promised to share some links to software/web development resources .

1. continuous integration/unit testing - to help avoid bugs and drive modular design, I write unit tests and run them automatically in travis-ci.org every time I change any code or periodically. Most languages have unit testing framework. A test framework in node/javascript I use is Tape https://www.npmjs.com/package/tape . The neat thing is that Tape can also help test code that runs in a browser. For a more general background in unit testing and test driven development, please refer to standard text https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/387190.Test_Driven_Development .

2. re-use existing libraries via package managers - to re-use existing libraries, package managers can be used to easily import and leverage code. Most languages have package managers. For node/javascript npm is a popular one. For client-side (in browser) javascript, I'd highly recommend using a package manager in combination with something like browserify https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browserify or similar to help package your javascript modules for use in a browser.

3. keep it simple - you'll find that there's intimidating amount of (javascript) libraries / frameworks that help to make things "easier". Similarly, there's many very cool nosql databases, webservices, compile-to-javascript languages (e.g., coffeescript, typescript), infrastructures, platform-as-a service stuff out there that (cl)aim to make your life easier. However, I'd argue that most web application can do very well with static (optionally data driven/generated via Jekyll or Hugo) webpages with plain old css, html, javascript using standard web browser apis. I find the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) documentation to be useful to learn more about the powerful capacities built into the browsers we use every day. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/ .

Hope this helps and curious to hear comments.

After we upload the next version (so not yet), use the binary 'parentheses' column to code "(authority, year)" vs "authority, year".

Here's an explanation:

If the original name of the species has changed, the format is modified by placing the name of the original authority (and, for an animal name, the year of publication of the name by the original authority) in parentheses. For example, the Philippine brown deer, Rusa marianna, was originally described as Cervus mariannus by Desmarest in 1822. For this reason, this name appears as “Rusa marianna (Desmarest, 1822)” in print. The reason for the use of parentheses is that the genus name now used for this species of Philippine deer is not the same name that Desmarest originally published.

https://www.aje.com/arc/editing-tip-scientific-names-species/

Continuing #22, #23, #26, #27, #28, #29, #31, cc @connorburgin.

I decided to split up the rodents as there will be plenty of things to talk about. Sciuromorpha will be next and I might split up the muroids further depending on how long it gets.

Rodentia: Hystricomorpha

Straightforward accepted changes

• New splits
  • Capromys garridoi < C. pilorides
  • Plagiodontia spelaeum < P. araeum (but the reference MDD cites says nothing about this species; I would cite: Hansford, J., Nuñez-Miño, J.M., Young, R.P., Brace, S., Brocca, J.L. and Turvey, S.T. 2012. Taxonomy-testing and the 'Goldilocks Hypothesis': morphometric analysis of species diversity in living and extinct Hispaniolan hutias. Systematics and Biodiversity 10(4):491-507. doi:10.1080/14772000.2012.748697)
  • Tympanoctomys loschalchalerosorum < T. barrerae
• Recently extinct species
  • Cuscomys oblativus (though it is not actually extinct; edited my DB to reflect that)
  • Lagostomus crassus
  • Boromys offella
  • Boromys torrei
  • Brotomys voratus (but see comments below on contractus)
  • Geocapromys columbianus
  • Heteropsomys insulans (but see below)
  • Hexolobodon phenax
  • Isolobodon montanus
  • Isolobodon portoricensis
• New species
  • Microcavia sorojchi
  • Ctenomys heniacamiare
• Spelling changes
  • Olallamys albicaudus -> albicauda
  • Proechimys brevicaudus -> brevicauda
• Other
  • Lagostomus cavifrons, L. debilis, L. egenus were mistakenly marked as extant in Hesperomys; they're Pleistocene fossils
  • Tympanoctomys aureus -> Pipanacoctomys aureus (I found the abstract at https://rid.unam.edu.ar/handle/20.500.12219/3421 convincing, I hope they publish their paper)

Bathyergidae

Cryptomys (+)

I accept MDD's provisional reclassification following Monadjem et al. (2015), sinking holosericeus and adding four additional species. However, I have some nitpicks about synonyms.

The MDD website gives no synonyms for Cryptomys pretoriae. Based on the maps in Monadjem et al. (2015), I believe the following synonyms should go into pretoriae: anomalus, arenarius, jamesoni, komatiensis (although this one is borderline), montanus, and palki. Possibly melanostictus and rufulus should also go into pretoriae, but I kept them in natalensis for now. Unfortunately the sources don't explicitly discuss allocation of synonyms. Among the names listed under hottentotus, it seems to me that jorisseni Jameson, 1909 from Watersberg, Limpopo Province, is from within the range of pretoriae Roberts, 1913, and would be a senior synonym.

Minor: MDD's Fukomys comments have a typo, the second mention of Coetomys is misspelled Coelomys.

Heliophobius kapiti (-)

I recognize this species; MDD puts it in Heliophobius argenteocinereus.

My reference was Uhrová et al. (2022), which isn't cited in the MDD. I'm open to changing this back but would like to see if that paper would be enough for you to reconsider adding kapiti.

I noticed that kapiti is probably not the oldest name for the proposed northern species of Heliophobius; I wrote to the authors about that but haven't received a response yet.

Ref: Uhrová, M., Mikula, O., Bennett, N.C., Van Daele, P., Piálek, L., Bryja, J., Visser, J.H., Jansen van Vuuren, B. and Šumbera, R. 2022. Species limits and phylogeographic structure in two genera of solitary African mole-rats Georychus and Heliophobius. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 167:107337. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2021.107337

Caviidae

Hydrochoerus

We both recognize two species of Hydrochoerus, as in MSW 3, but I was curious if you had seen Byrne et al. (2021), who showed that isthmius is basically not genetically distinct from the rest of the capybaras.

Ref: Byrne, M.S., Ruiz-García, M. and Túnez, J.I. 2021. Phylogeography of the capybara, Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris, in a large portion of its distribution area in South America. Journal of Mammalian Evolution 29(1):191-206. doi:10.1007/s10914-021-09569-2

Pediolagus (MDD) vs. Dolichotis (Hesp) (-)

MDD recognizes the genus Pediolagus, I do not.

Recognizing Pediolagus is problematic for me because it would leave several fossil species stranded. Madozzo-Jaén et al. (2021) recently reviewed a fossil Dolichotis and explicitly rejected the genus Pediolagus.

Ref: Madozzo-Jaén, M.C., Pérez, M.E. and Deschamps, C.M. 2021. The oldest species of Dolichotis (Rodentia, Hystricognathi) from the Pliocene of Argentina: Redescription and taxonomic status of "Orthomyctera" chapalmalense. Journal of Mammalian Evolution 28(3):995-1013. doi:10.1007/s10914-021-09559-4
4017:6778

Ctenomyidae (+)

MDD recognizes a family Ctenomyidae; I put Ctenomys in Octodontidae. It seems to be universally agreed that Ctenomys is sister to the octodontids, so this is purely a subjective decision on rank.

I made this change based on paleontological papers like Verzi et al. (2014) that placed Ctenomyidae as a subfamily of Octodontidae. However, more recent paleontological literature (e.g., Boivin et al., 2019; De Santi et al., 2021) goes back to recognizing Ctenomyidae as a family, so I will change back to recognizing Ctenomyidae as a family.

References:

• Boivin, M., Marivaux, L. and Antoine, P.-O. 2019-02-28. L'apport du registre paléogène d'Amazonie sur la diversification initiale des Caviomorpha (Hystricognathi, Rodentia): implications phylogénétiques, macroévolutives et paléobiogéographiques. Geodiversitas 41(1):143-245. doi:10.5252/geodiversitas2019v41a4
• De Santi, N.A., Verzi, D.H., Olivares, A.I., Piñero, P., Álvarez, A. and Morgan, C.C. 2021-03-04. A new Pleistocene Ctenomys and divergence dating of the hyperdiverse South American rodent family Ctenomyidae. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 19(5):377-392. doi:10.1080/14772019.2021.1910583
• Verzi, D.H., Olivares, A.I. and Morgan, C.C. 2014. Phylogeny, evolutionary patterns and timescale of South American octodontoid rodents: The importance of recognising morphological differentiation in the fossil record. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 59(4):757-769. doi:10.4202/app.2012.0135

Echimyidae

Brotomys contractus (-)

MDD comments say that B. contractus is tentatively included in B. voratus, citing Turvey et al. (2017). I looked at that paper and they do not say anything about B. contractus. (They don't list B. contractus among recently extinct species, but that might as well be because they believe it went extinct earlier.) On a quick look I couldn't find any reference that casts doubt on the validity of B. contractus.

Heteropsomys antillensis (-)

A similar situation here, where MDD tentatively sinks this species under H. insulans. This one has slightly more support: Turvey et al. (2007) say "Heteropsomys insulans (?=Homopsomys antillensis)". However, Borroto Páez et al. (2012) still recognize both species as valid.

In both cases, I can easily believe that these subfossil species have been oversplit, but I'd prefer to maintain the current taxonomy until there is a more definite taxonomic revision.

Refs:

• Borroto Páez, R., Mancina, C.A., Woods, C.A. and Kilpatrick, C.W. 2012. Updated checklist of endemic terrestrial mammals of the West Indies. Pp. 389–415 in Zachos, F.E. and Asher, R.J. (eds.). Mammalian Evolution, Diversity and Systematics. Walter de Gruyter.
• Turvey, S.T., Oliver, J.R., Narganes Storde, Y.M. and Rye, P. 2007. Late Holocene extinction of Puerto Rican native land mammals. Biology Letters 3(2):193-196. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2006.0585

Hyperplagiodontia araeum (MDD) vs. araea (Hesp) (+)

The specific name is certainly an adjective; Ray expressly says that it derives from Greek ἀραιόν "narrow". However, what is the gender of the generic name? Names in -odontia are generally feminine (e.g., Aplodontia rufa), but everybody who has named a Plagiodontia species seems to have used the neuter (e.g., hylaeum, ipnaeum, spelaeum). I suspect it's because Cuvier named the first species Plagiodontia aedium, and in that name the -um is not a neuter ending but a genitive plural. If the name is really feminine, then the names of Plagiodontia ipnaeum and P. spelaeum should also change. However, maybe it's better to just treat the name as neuter now. For now I'm going to go back to araeum.

AI: Confirm nomenclature

Makalata obscura (MDD) vs. Loncheres obscura (Hesp) (-)

I treat this name as a nomen dubium, and my rule in the database is to use the original combination for nomina dubia. I might reconsider that rule and change the species name to Makalata obscura, but I'm going to punt on that for now.

I list this species as a nomen dubium based on Mammals of South America and Miranda et al. (2021). I would suggest that MDD shouldn't include this species, as your aim generally is to cover valid species. There are many other nomina dubia based on extant mammals, and they aren't included in MDD either.

Ref: Miranda, C.L., Nunes, M. daS., Farias, I.P., Silva, M.N.F. da, Rossi, R.V., Eler, E., Feldberg, E., da Silva, R.D.F., de Oliveira, T.G., Nagamachi, C.Y. and Pieczarka, J.C. 2021-11. A molecular and chromosomic meta-analysis approach and its implications for the taxonomy of the genus Makalata Husson, 1978 (Rodentia, Echimyidae) including an amended diagnosis for M. macrura (Wagner, 1842). Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research 59(8):2387-2409. doi:10.1111/jzs.12573

Mesocapromys nana (MDD) vs. nanus (Hesp) (+)

MDD comments say that as nana is the original spelling and it is a noun, the original form should be preserved. I was surprised to learn that this is true; dictionaries list nanus only as a noun (meaning "dwarf"), and nana as a female noun. In practice it seems to me that the word is treated as an adjective in zoological nomenclature, in that people use nanus with masculine and nana with feminine genera, but under a strict reading of the Code these names should be treated as nouns in apposition, which stay the same regardless of generic assignment.

There are at least two other valid species of mammals that are affected if we treat this name consistently:

• Afronycteris nanus, which I suggested in #26 should be changed to nana. In fact, the original name was Vespertilio nanus, so if we treat it as a noun, we should keep it as Afronycteris nanus.
• Mazama nana, which was originally Cervus nanus, and therefore should now be Mazama nanus.

AI: Confirm situation for all three names.

Trinomys minor (+)

I recognize this species, MDD includes it in T. albispinus. My reference was Gutiérrez & Marinho-Filho (2017), which was in turn based on Iack-Ximenes's unpublished thesis. However, more recently Nacif et al. (2022) studied Trinomys and found no support for this species.

Ref: Gutiérrez, E.E. and Marinho-Filho, J. 2017. The mammalian faunas endemic to the Cerrado and the Caatinga. ZooKeys 644:105-157. doi:10.3897/zookeys.644.10827

Sirenia

Just for completeness and to get it out of the way:

Straightforward accepted changes:

• Recently extinct species
  • Hydrodamalis gigas

Adding subdivisions of the countries would be a great next step -- we actually have a 'subregionDistribution' field in the CSV, but it is only populated for certain countries + the USA. Could you implement this for the USA states with an option for it to populate as we curate additional data in the column?

Originally posted by @n8upham in #13 (comment)

Finishing the series #22, #23, #26, #27, #28, #29, #31, #32, #33 cc @connorjburgin.

Rodentia: Supramyomorpha

Straightforward accepted changes

• New mergers
  • Scarturus toussi -> S. vinogradovi
  • Jaculus thaleri -> J. blanfordi
  • Lemmus amurensis, L. sibiricus -> L. lemmus
  • Craseomys shanseius -> C. rufocanus
  • 6 Eothenomys/Anteliomys spp. merged into various others
  • Ellobius alaicus -> E. tancrei
  • Microtus breweri -> M. pennsylvanicus
  • Microtus elbeyli -> M. dogramacii
  • Microtus miurus -> M. abbreviatus
  • Mesocricetus nigriculus -> M. raddei
  • Reithrodontomys bakeri -> R. wagneri
  • Abrothrix hershkovitzi -> A. olivacea
  • Euneomys petersoni -> E. chinchilloides
  • Holochilus vulpinus -> H. brasiliensis
  • Oligoryzomys yatesi -> O. longicaudatus (though I would suggest citing another reference because your cited reference predates the description of O. yatesi: Hurtado, N. and D'Elía, G. 2019. An assessment of species limits of the South American mouse genus Oligoryzomys (Rodentia, Cricetidae) using unilocus delimitation methods. Zoologica Scripta 48(5):557-570. doi:10.1111/zsc.12365)
  • Oligoryzomys fornesi, O. occidentalis -> O. flavescens
  • Gerbillus perpallidus -> G. floweri
  • Gerbillus dongolanus -> G. pyramidum
  • Gerbillus zakariai -> G. simoni
  • Meriones dahli -> M. meridianus
  • Taterillus harringtoni -> T. emini
  • Pseudomys fieldi -> P. gouldii
  • Uromys nero and U. scaphax -> U. caudimaculatus (split was based on Helgen's work that has not been fully published)
  • Mus orangiae -> Mus minutoides
  • Otomys maximus -> O. angoniensis
  • Otomys saundersiae -> O. irroratus
  • Leopoldamys vociferans -> L. sabanus (though MDD currently only cites a reference that considers the species valid; I would add a ref to yourself: Burgin, C.J. 2017. Indomalayan Long-tailed Giant Rat Leopoldamys sabanus. Pp. 854–855 in Wilson, D.E., Mittermeier, R.A. and Lacher, T.E. (eds.). Handbook of the Mammals of the World. Volume 7. Rodents II. Lynx, 1008 pp.)
  • Rattus foersteri -> R. steini
  • Rattus unicolor -> R. verecundus
  • Nannospalax carmeli, galili, golani, judaei, munzuri -> N. ehrenbergi
  • Nannospalax tuncelicus -> N. xanthodon (MDD has this name under ehrenbergi too, which is incorrect according to Arslan et al., 2016, p. 295)
  • 11 Tachyoryctes spp. -> Tachyoryctes splendens (though I find it really difficult to believe there are only two Tachyoryctes species)
• New species
  • Alticola kohistanicus
  • Chionomys stekolnikovi
  • Neodon nepalensis
  • Akodon diauarum
  • Cerradomys akroai
  • Holochilus oxe
  • Rhipidomys ochoagrateroli
  • Thomasomys antoniobracki
  • Thomasomys burneoi
  • Mus harennensis
  • Baletemys kampalili
  • Bullimus carletoni
  • Eospalax muliensis
  • Typhlomys fengjiensis
• New splits
  • Heteromys bulleri < H. irroratus
  • Scarturus aulacotis < Allactaga major
  • Scarturus caprimulga < S. williamsi
  • Scarturus heptneri < S. elater
  • Scarturus indicus < S. elater
  • Jaculus loftusi < J. jaculus (I didn't include this one before because Shenbrot et al., 2016, were not very definite in recognizing it as a species; would suggest citing HMW in addition to Shenbrot et al., 2016)
  • Alexandromys alpinus < A. mongolicus (though I agree with your concern that the name is unavailable: the main text of the article doesn't have sufficient information to make the name available, and the supplement isn't a valid publication under the Code)
  • Microtus drummondi and M. dukecampbelli < M. pennsylvanicus
  • Microtus fingeri < M. subterraneus
  • Microtus rossiaemeridionalis < M. mystacinus
  • Microtus schidlovskii < M. irani
  • Dinaromys longipedis < D. bogdanovi
  • Baiomys brunneus < B. musculus
  • Reithrodontomys albilabris, R. wagneri < R. microdon
  • Holochilus nanus < H. sciureus
  • Oligoryzomys costaricensis < O. fulvescens
  • Oryzomys texensis < O. palustris
  • Calomys mattevii < C. expulsus
  • Lophuromys cinereus < L. aquilus
  • Rhabdomys chakae < R. dilectus
  • Rhabdomys bechuanae, R. intermedius < R. pumilio
  • Thamnomys schoutedeni < T. venustus
  • Otomys auratus < O. irroratus
  • Otomys karoensis < O. saundersiae
  • Hylomyscus simus < H. alleni
  • Leopoldamys hainanensis < L. edwardsi
  • Dendromus kumasi < D. messorius
  • Poemys pecilei < P. melanotis
  • Myospalax armandi < M. aspalax
  • Myospalax epsilanus < M. psilurus
• Generic reassignments
  • Salpingotulus -> Salpingotus
  • Aschizomys lemminus -> Alticola
  • Myodes macrotis -> Alticola
  • Anteliomys split from Eothenomys
  • Myodes -> Clethrionomys
  • Bramus split from Ellobius
  • Proedromys liangshanensis -> Mictomicrotus
  • Stenocranius split from Lasiopodomys
  • Myotomys -> Otomys
  • Frateromys split from Bunomys
  • Paruromys -> Taeromys
• Spelling changes
  • Scarturus euphratica -> S. euphraticus
  • Scarturus tetradactyla -> S. tetradactylus
  • Alticola albicaudus -> A. albicauda (I reviewed all -cauda names in my database to find additional cases where I had incorrectly changed the ending)
  • Alticola strelzowi -> A. strelzovi
  • Microtus juldaschi -> M. yuldaschi
  • Oxymycterus incus -> O. inca
  • Thaptomys nigritus -> T. nigrita
  • Zygodontomys brevicaudus -> Z. brevicauda
  • Rhipidomys tenuicaudus -> R. tenuicauda
  • Wiedomys pyrrhorhinos -> W. pyrrhorinos
  • Dasymys suus -> D. sua
  • Thallomys nigricaudus -> T. nigricauda
  • Lorentzimys nouhuysi -> L. nouhuysii (confirmed from the original description)
  • Pogonomelomys bruijni -> P. bruijnii
  • Mus fragilicaudus -> M. fragilicauda
  • Stenocephalus griseicaudus -> S. griseicauda
  • Vandeleuria nilagirica -> V. nilagiricus
  • Vandeleuria oleracea -> V. oleraceus
  • Brachytarsomys albicaudus -> B. albicauda (relatedly, the comment under villosa is wrong; it should instead say that villosa is an adjective that should agree in gender with the genus)
• Recently extinct species
  • Antillomys rayi
  • Megalomys desmarestii
  • Megalomys georginae
  • Megalomys luciae
  • Megaoryzomys curioi
  • Nesoryzomys darwini
  • Nesoryzomys swarthi (actually extant; I had marked the wrong species as extinct)
  • Noronhomys vespuccii
  • Oligoryzomys victus
  • Oryzomys antillarum
  • Oryzomys nelsoni
  • Pennatomys nivalis
  • Conilurus capricornensis
  • Coryphomys buehleri
  • Coryphomys musseri
  • Melomys spechti
  • Notomys robustus
  • Solomys spriggsarum
• Other changes
  • Removed Myodes primitivus (fossil species incorrectly marked as extant)
  • Papagomys armandvillei is fossil (rather embarrassingly since this was based on my own research)
  • Microtus gerbii -> M. pyrenaicus

Changes MDD is planning to make already:

• Perognathus arizonensis split from P. longimembris
• Peromyscus avius split from P. eremicus
• Lemniscomys bellieri merged into L. macculus

Heteromyidae

Heteromys (MDD) vs. Liomys, Schaeferia (Hesp) (+)

I recognize Liomys and Schaeferia as separate genera, MDD lumps them into Heteromys because Hafner et al. (2007) found the old genus Liomys to be paraphyletic. The three-genus arrangement was suggested independently by Anderson & Gutiérrez (2009) and Ramírez-Pulido et al. (2014), but it hasn't been accepted and I will put them all in a single genus. (Side note because it confused me when I was doing searches for this name: there is also a collembolan genus Schaefferia with two f's that is sometimes misspelled Schaeferia. It doesn't preoccupy the heteromyid name.)

Ref:

• Anderson, R.P. and Gutiérrez, E.E. 2009-12-15. Taxonomy, distribution, and natural history of the genus Heteromys (Rodentia: Heteromyidae) in central and eastern Venezuela, with the description of a new species from the Cordillera de la Costa. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 331:33-93. doi:10.1206/582-2.1 HDL 2246/6035)
• Ramírez-Pulido, J., González-Ruiz, N., Gardner, A.L. and Arroyo-Cabrales, J. 2014. List of Recent land mammals of Mexico, 2014. Special Publications, Museum of Texas Tech University 63:1-69.

Sminthidae

Sminthidae (MDD) vs. Sicistidae (Hesp) (-)

I have a note under this family: "Has priority over Sminthidae under Art. 40.2 of the Code, because Allen (1901) replaced Sminthinae with Sicistinae when he recognized Sminthus as a junior synonym of Sicista." I still think that's correct, but need to check whether anyone else has discussed this situation. I should publish this along with the Nannosciurinae/Callosciurinae situation. I think MDD should keep Sminthidae for now.

Sicista tianshanica (-!)

We both currently spell this name tianshanica, but the paper describing S. talgarica and S. terskeica noted that the correct original spelling is tianschanica. I confirmed this is correct: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/8352391

I am changing the spelling to tianschanica and I would recommend MDD make the change too. (After I wrote this I realized you already told me you're making this change.)

Separately, the front matter for the volume says it was printed in March 1904 ("напечатано по распоряжению Императорской Академии наук. Мартъ, 1904 г. Непременный Секретарь, Академикъ Н. Дубровиць"), so the date should be changed to 1904.

Zapodidae

6 additional species of Napaeozapus and Zapus (-)

MDD accepts the splits by Malaney et al. (2017), recognizing 10 instead of 4 species of American zapodids; I do not.

I saw this paper when it was published but didn't accept their suggested taxonomy because they introduced a nomen nudum and because it seemed good to wait to see if the new classification would be accepted. I don't think there have been further studies of zapodid genetics since then, but I can find few references that accept the split. I'll probably switch to the new taxonomy if that remains your preference though.

Cricetidae: Arvicolinae

Anteliomys custos c(h)angs(h)anensis (-)

I noticed that for this Chinese vole I have cangshanensis, MDD has changshanensis, and the Krystufek book has changsanensis. I haven't seen the original description, but MSW 3 uses cangshanensis and according to Krystufek the type locality is "Dali Cangshan", so I think that is most likely correct.

Myodes/Clethrionomys (+)

Probably the most intractable purely nomenclatural disagreement in mammals. I am going to accept the current emerging consensus and switch to Clethrionomys, but I have discovered several type designations in the 19th-century literature that are relevant to this controversy and I am going to try to publish about it.

AI: Publish

Chionomys syriacus (MDD) vs. C. nivalis (Hesp) (-!)

The name syriacus was recently discovered to be a senior synonym of nivalis. However, there is a pending petition to the Commission to conserve the junior name (Case 3859; receipt acknowledged in the BZN). Under Article 82 of the Code, prevailing usage should be maintained until the application is resolved. Chionomys nivalis is clearly in prevailing usage, so I would strongly recommend that MDD switch back to using nivalis.

Cricetidae: Neotominae

Neotoma nelsoni (+)

MDD recognizes Neotoma nelsoni as a species; I have it as a synony of Neotoma leucodon based on Fernández (2014), who found it to be nested genetically within N. leucodon. However, Bradley et al. (2022) found some conflicting evidence and recommended that nelsoni be kept as a species provisionally, so I'll put it back for now. I haven't tracked down where all of Bradley's material comes from (they give specimen numbers but not localities), but it sounds like their material did not cover the whole range of Neotoma leucodon and the species may not be monophyletic.

Refs:

• Bradley, R.D., Edwards, C.W., Lindsey, L.L., Bateman, J.R., Cajimat, M.N.B., Milazzo, M.L., Fulhorst, C.F., Matocq, M.D. and Mauldin, M.R. 2022-10-14. Reevaluation of the phylogenetic relationships among Neotomini rodents (Hodomys, Neotoma, and Xenomys) and comments on the woodrat classification. Journal of Mammalogy 103(5):1221-1236. doi:10.1093/jmammal/gyac031
• Fernández, J.A. 2014. Mitochondrial phylogenetics of a rare Mexican endemic: Nelson's woodrat, Neotoma nelsoni (Rodentia: Cricetidae), with comments on its biogeographic history. The Southwestern Naturalist 59(1):81-90. doi:10.1894/F11-CLG-58.1

Peromyscus arcticus (-)

MDD recognizes the distinctive Peromyscus species from Yukon as Peromyscus arcticus but acknowledges in comments that the name may not be applicable. I agree that this population likely represents a separate species, but I believe it has no available name, so it should not be included in the database until someone names it. Bradley et al. (2019) also refer to this form as "Peromyscus sp." only.

Greenbaum et al. (2019:564) attribute the name arcticus to Wagner (1845), apparently in error; Wagner (1845) in fact named Peromyscus maniculatus. The name arcticus instead first appears in Coues (1877), as articus on p. 61 and arcticus on p. 67; Coues cited a name found on the label for specimen USNM 3924 from Labrador. He didn't treat the name as valid and identified the specimen as Hesperomys leucopus. Next Mearns (1890) named Hesperomys leucopus arcticus for a specimen from Mackenzie in the Northwest Territories. Later Mearns (1911) recognized his arcticus as a junior homonym of Coues's arcticus, and therefore replaced it with borealis. This is important because Coues's name by default would be unavailable because it was published as a synonym, but ICZN Art. 11.6.1 states that if such a name is treated as a senior homonym before 1961, it becomes available as of its first publication as a synonym. Therefore, arcticus Coues, 1877, is an available name.

But arcticus Coues is from Labrador, within the range of Peromyscus maniculatus sensu stricto, so it is clearly not available for the Yukon form. Instead, borealis Mearns could be an available name for this species, but according to Bradley et al. (2019:28), its type locality is within the range of Peromyscus sonoriensis, not the Yukon Peromyscus. (They cite the type locality as "Fort Simpson, Yukon Territory", which is incorrect; Fort Simpson is in the Northwest Territories.)

Refs:

• Bradley, R.D., Francis, J.Q., Platt, R.N., II, Soniat, T.J., Alvarez, D. and Lindsey, L.L. 2019-10-10. Mitochondrial DNA sequence data indicate evidence for multiple species within Peromyscus maniculatus. Special Publications, Museum of Texas Tech University 70:1-59.
• Coues, E. 1877. Muridae. Pp. 1–264 in Coues, E. and Allen, J.A. (eds.). Monographs of the North American Rodentia. United States Geological Survey of the Territories, 940 pp.
• Greenbaum, I.F., Honeycutt, R.L. and Chirhart, S.E. 2019. Taxonomy and phylogenetics of the Peromyscus maniculatus species group. Special Publications, Museum of Texas Tech University 71:559-575.
• Mearns, E.A. 1890. Description of supposed new species and subspecies of mammals, from Arizona. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2(20):277-307. HDL 2246/1702
• Mearns, E.A. 1911. New names for two subspecies of Peromyscus maniculatus (Wagner). Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 24:101-102. URL: http://biostor.org/reference/82727
• Wagner, J.A. 1845. Diagnosen einiger neuen Arten von Nagern und Handflüglern. Archiv für Naturgeschichte 11:145-149.

Peromyscus totontepecus

I accept the split of this species from Peromyscus mexicanus, but it appears the species should actually be called P. tehuantepecus. Both names were published in the same paper (Merriam, 1898): Peromyscus mexicanus totontepecus Merriam, 1898:120 and Peromyscus tehuantepecus Merriam, 1898:122. The Code specifies (Art. 24.1) that if two names are published simultanteously but with different ranks, the one with higher rank has precedence. Since tehuantepecus was established as a species and totontepecus as a subspecies, tehuantepecus has priority. I am going to recognize the species as Peromyscus tehuantepecus.

AI: Publish

Cricetidae: Sigmodontinae

Oxymycterus caparoae (MDD) vs. Oxymycterus caparaoe (Hesp) (-!)

The original spelling is caparaoe. I believe the incorrect spelling was introduced by MSW 3.

AI: Publish

Hylaeamys laticeps and H. seuanezi (-)

MDD recognizes Hylaeamys laticeps as valid with seuanezi as a synonym; I recognize seuanezi as valid.

There are two uncontested species involved here, Hylaeamys megacephalus in the Cerrado and other open habitats, and Hylaeamys seuanezi in the Atlantic Forest. The type locality of H. laticeps is in a transitional zone between the Cerrado and the Atlantic Forest, so the issue is whether it is a junior synonym of megacephalus or a senior synonym of seuanezi. Brennand et al. (2013) (which I peer reviewed) examined the type material of laticeps and found that morphometrically it falls within H. megacephalus. I don't see anything in the comments or references in MDD that casts serious doubt on that conclusion.

Phyllotis rupestris (-)

This is a similar situation to Peromyscus arcticus, where there is good evidence for a split but the name of the newly recognized species is uncertain. In this case, the cited sources do not explicitly recognize a species Phyllotis rupestris; they call it the "clade of P. x. posticalis-P. x. rupestris" (Jayat et al., 2021:701; Ojeda et al., 2021:277). As discussed by Jayat et al. (2021:704), the type of rupestris is lost but the name may actually represent P. limatus or P. vaccarum. Given this uncertainty, I will maintain the previous classification and keep this name in P. xanthopygus.

Rhipidomys bezerrensis and R. caracolensis (-)

I am going to hold off on these two new species until their description is actually published; what I could find online today was only an accepted manuscript.

Muridae: Murinae

Thamnomys (MDD) vs. Grammomys (Hesp) (-)

I place "Thamnomys" kuru and "Thamnomys" poensis in Grammomys following Mikula et al. (2021), who showed that Grammomys is otherwise paraphyletic.

Ref: Mikula, O., Nicolas, V., Šumbera, R., Konečný, A., Denys, C., Verheyen, E., Bryjová, A., Lemmon, A.R., Moriarty Lemmon, E. and Bryja, J. 2021. Nuclear phylogenomics, but not mitogenomics, resolves the most successful Late Miocene radiation of African mammals (Rodentia: Muridae: Arvicanthini). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 157:107069. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2021.107069

Hydromys and Uromys neobritannicus (MDD) vs. neobrittanicus (Hesp) (-)

The original spelling for both species (Hydromys and Uromys) is neobrittanicus. Both spellings are common.

Hylomyscus kaimosae (-)

MDD has this species as distinct from stella, citing Nicolas et al. (2006). However, Nicolas et al. (2020:10) confirmed that kaimosae is a synonym of stella.

Ref: Nicolas, V., Fabre, P.-H., Bryja, J., Denys, C., Verheyen, E., Missoup, A.-D., Olayemi, A., Katuala, P., Dudu, A., Colyn, M., Kerbis Peterhans, J.C. and Demos, T.C. 2020. The phylogeny of the African wood mice (Muridae, Hylomyscus) based on complete mitochondrial genomes and five nuclear genes reveals their evolutionary history and undescribed diversity. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 144:106703. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2019.106703

Myomyscus verreauxii (MDD) vs. verreauxi (Hesp) (-)

I follow Grubb (2004:104) here, who established that verreauxi is a justified emendation of verroxii, the original spelling. Given that this hinges on prevailing usage, I'm not sure there is a right answer here.

Nesomyidae

Dendromus melanotis (MDD) vs. Poemys melanotis (Hesp) (-)

Dendromus melanotis is the type species of Poemys, so if Poemys is to be recognized as a valid genus, melanotis must be included. From reading Voelker et al. (2021), it seems that various names that have previously been assigned to melanotis are in the Poemys clade, but there's no genetic evidence for melanotis itself. It doesn't seem unreasonable then to place melanotis in Poemys along with its presumed close relatives. Alternatively, Poemys could be subsumed back into Dendromus pending a more thorough taxonomic revision.

Reproduction steps:

• Go to https://www.mammaldiversity.org/explore.html
• Type "Urocitellus"
• Click a species
• Hit the "Back" button
• "Urocitellus" is still in the search box, but all species show up

Instead, it should still show just the Urocitellus species.

First in a series of conversations with @JelleZijlstra, Connor Burgin, and @n8upham (Jan 21, 2023):

So far I have gone over Afrosoricida (just one issue) and Artiodactyla (a lot). My plan is to go over the orders in alphabetical order and send you the results, but let me know if a different format would work better for you. After this is done, we can work on matching up synonyms, which will be easier once the classifications are more aligned.
Key:

Straightforward changes listed at the beginning of each order
+: I accept the MDD's classification (but there is perhaps room for further discussion)
-: I choose to maintain my classification for now
-!: Same, but I recommend that MDD change its classification
AI: Action item

Afrosoricida

Chrysochloridae

Chrysospalax villosa vs. villosus (-)

MDD has villosus, I have villosa.

My notes on the name complex say: "From σπάλαξ spalax "mole-rat, spalacid". LSJ claims the word is feminine, sometimes masculine. The variant ἀσπάλαξ aspalax is masculine. In practice, -spalax names are treated as masculine." (e.g. Spalax graecus)

Gill's original description of the name talks about "C. villosa", but the C. stands for Chrysochloris, not Chrysospalax, as Gill named the taxon as a "section" of Chrysochloris.

AI: Confirm this specific epithet change; I think there's room for disagreement.

Artiodactyla

Straightforward accepted changes:

New mergers
Alcelaphus caama and A. lichtensteinii -> A. buselaphus
Capricornis milneedwardsii and C. thar -> C. sumatraensis
Damaliscus korrigum and D. superstes -> D. lunatus
Kobus anselli -> K. leche
Minor: MDD doesn't cite a source for synonymizing this species; it merely states that the Groves & Grubb taxonomy is rejected. It should probably cite: Jeffery, R. and Nefdt, R. 2013. Kobus leche southern lechwe. In: J. S. Kingdon and M. Hoffmann (eds), The Mammals of Africa, Bloomsbury, London, UK, pp. 449-453.
Alces americanus -> A. alces
Delphinus capensis -> D. delphis
Tursiops australis -> T. aduncus
Tursiops gephyreus -> T. truncatus
New splits
Cephalophus rubidus < C. nigrifrons
Eudorcas albonotatus and E. tilonura < E. rufifrons
Madoqua cavendishi, M. damarensis, M. hindei, M. thomasi < M. kirkii
Minor: your reference to Brotherton (2013) is missing page numbers (should be pp. 327-333).
Cervus hanglu < C. elaphus
Inia humboldtiana < I. geoffrensis
New species
Mesoplodon eueu
Spelling fixes
Mazama gouazoupira -> M. gouazoubira (I missed an ICZN decision)
Recently extinct species omitted from my database export
Lipotes vexillifer
Other changes
Mazama jucunda is a senior synonym of M. bororo
Casatia, a fossil, was mistakenly marked as extant in Hesperomys
Babyrousa bolabatuensis, a subfossil, was mistakenly marked as extant in Hesperomys
Bovidae

Bos domesticus and banteng (-)

MDD recognizes domesticus as a separate species for the domestic banteng. Possibly more consistent, but this species isn't generally recognized in my experience. Gentry et al. (2004) do not discuss the banteng.

MDD attributes the name domesticus to Wilckens, 1905. I instead have Bos banteng domesticus Duerst, 1905, as a nomen nudum. This book is here: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Grundz%C3%BCge_der_Naturgeschichte_der_Haust/JWDZAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Grundz%C3%BCge+der+Naturgeschichte+der+Haustiere&printsec=frontcover

The book is a reworking by Duerst of a previous book by Wilckens, who was dead by the time it was published. In the foreword, Duerst explicitly says that he completely redid the section on cattle (p. iv). So I think the name should indeed be attributed to Duerst, not Wilckens. Whether or not domesticus Duerst is a nomen nudum is more debatable. The citation on p. 245 is very barebones ("Bos Banteng domesticus, das zahme Bantengrind"), but there is some more discussion of bantengs on pp. 239-242. However, I don't see any characters cited that are supposed to distinguish domesticated from wild bantengs.

MDD says domesticus is preoccupied but there is no other alternative name. According to my notes the name seleniceros Heller, 1890, may have been based on a domestic banteng; it came from Timor where wild bantengs do not occur. Unfortunately I haven't been able to locate the original description. I did dig up the original description of seligniceros Meyer, 1879 (not 1878), a nomen nudum also based on a specimen from Timor (perhaps the same one?).

AI:

Figure out nomenclature for domesticus.
Confirm whether seleniceros is available for the domestic banteng.
In Hesp, consider recognizing domestic bantengs at the subspecies level at least.
Bos indicus, B. primigenius, B. taurus (-)

B. primigenius was omitted from the list I sent only because it is extinct. I recognize it as valid.

MDD recognizes Bos indicus and Bos taurus as separate domestic species, based on Gentry et al. (2004). I have them as subspecies of Bos taurus.

This is mostly a philosophical disagreement, and I don't think there's been much discussion in the literature. I currently recognize the wild ancestors of the zebu and taurine cattle as the same species, Bos primigenius, so I think it makes sense to recognize a single domestic species. It's true that there are two independent domestications, but that appears to be true for several other domestic species too (e.g. pigs) and splitting them up isn't practical.

AI: Come to an agreement on how to handle this case.

Budorcas tibetana (+)

New split in MDD. I hadn't seen the main cited source and I'll accept the split.

MDD also cites Groves & Grubb's Ungulate Taxonomy but generally rejects their taxonomy. I have done the same thing because I felt they needed some incubation to know if they'd be accepted. Indeed, in this case G&G recognize four takin species, but we ended up with only two.

Nomenclature: I had the specific epithet as tibetanus, but I misread a dictionary entry and the Greek word δορκάς is actually feminine. The spelling tibetana is correct.

Capra caucasica vs. cylindricornis (-)

MDD recognizes Capra cylindricornis as a separate species, I have it as a subspecies.

I hadn't seen the cited source (Weinberg et al., 2010). However, it actually suggests naming the two species cylindricornis and severtzovi, because caucasica is supposedly based on a hybrid. They also don't even sound very convinced that there are really two species. Given this uncertainty and the absence of genetic evidence, I would prefer to stick to one species.

Minor: MDD has a typo in the journal name (should be Galemys, not Galemy). The original spelling of severtzovi is severtzowi; I'll list severtzovi as an incorrect subsequent spelling for now.

Cephalophus vs. Cephalophorus and Cephalophula (-)

MDD recognizes Cephalophorus (and Cephalophula) as a separate genus; I don't.

The cited source (Bärmann et al., 2022) is a mtDNA-only study that doesn't fully resolve the relationships among cephalophines, but Cephalophus is recovered as possibly paraphyletic relative to Sylvicapra. This seems a little marginal and I'm going to skip the generic rearrangement for now.

They also name Leucocephalophus as a new genus, with just barely enough to move it beyond being a nomen nudum. I will make it a subgenus for now.

Cephalophus kivuensis (-)

MDD recognizes C. kivuensis as a separate species from "C. nigrifrons"; I don't.

This is based on the same source. Their mtDNA tree (fig. 3) shows pretty much every other species in the group to be nonmonophyletic, suggesting that either mtDNA isn't good at sorting out species here or a much more thorough reclassification is in order. They don't specify where their samples of nigrifrons come from. There are various other available synonyms of nigrifrons from the eastern part of its distribution (e.g. emini). I would reject the change and wait for something more comprehensive.

Cephalophus silvicultor vs. silvicultrix (-)

MDD has the epithet as silvicultor, I have silvicultrix.

The original spelling (which I have seen) is silvicultrix. It was combined with the feminine name Antilope, but now it is in masculine Cephalophus.

This is a Latin noun meaning "female forest cultivator". The masculine form would be silvicultor, but since the word is a noun, not an adjective, it does not change form based on the gender of the genus.

AI: Confirm this and publish it.

Eudorcas rufina (-)

MDD lumps rufinus/rufina within rufifrons while I have it as valid.

MDD cites Mammals of Africa p. 357 for lumping the two. But the account there sounds more like the author is discussing a related extinct species in the account of another one, not that they are necessarily synonymizing them. The name isn't listed as an explicit synonym or subspecies, and its range is not included in the range map for rufifrons. I would like to see more evidence before changing the classification.

Nomenclature: as with Budorcas, Eudorcas is feminine, so the -us names in my database are wrong and I will fix them.

Gazella arabica and erlangeri (+)

MDD reorganizes these species (enlarging arabica to include erlangeri and various subspecies of gazella), based on Bärmann et al. (2013), which I missed.

There is a discrepancy in the name of the form darehshourii, which MDD and Bärmann spell dareshurii. I did some digging but can't quite confirm which spelling is right:

The original description is at https://jsciences.ut.ac.ir/article_31396.html but the PDF link is broken
An archive of Groves's old website is at https://web.archive.org/web/20130514055726/http://arts.anu.edu.au/grovco/Bovids.htm but the link to this paper is broken (it goes to his Gazella bennettii paper instead). However, text on the page spells the name dareshurii. It was named after "Mr Bijan Dareshuri, Biologist of Fars Province, Iran".
In the 2001 Action Plan (https://portals.iucn.org/library/efiles/documents/2001-024.pdf) Groves contributed the piece on Iran and there the name is spelled darehshourii (p. 117).
MSW 3 also spelled it darehshourii.
The bibliography of Groves by Rookmaker & Robovský (2018) spells it darehshourii.
Karami et al. (2002) use dareshurii. Ref: Karami, M., Hemami, M.R. and Groves, C.P. 2002. Taxonomic, distributional and ecological date on gazelles in Iran. Zoology in the Middle East 26:29-36.
Chiozzi et al. (2021) list the original description as being darehshourii, but cite Karami et al. (2002) as the first to use dareshurii. Ref: Chiozzi, G., De Marchi, G., Fasola, M., Ibrahim, K.M., Bardelli, G., Hagos, F., Rocca, F. and Masseti, M. 2021. Insular gazelles of the circum-Arabian seas: origin, distribution, dwarfism and taxonomy. Mammalian Biology 102(1):1-20. doi:10.1007/s42991-021-00186-3
Based on the above I think most likely the original spelling was darehshourii and Groves/the Iranians started changing it in 2002 (maybe Dareshuri let his preference about the spelling of his surname be known?). But that's pure speculation until we have the original description. Either way, there's enough of a disagreement here that we should publish a discussion of the spelling of this form.

AI: Confirm spelling of dareshurii.

Nanger notata/us and N. petersii (+)

Two species split from N. granti; another similar situation and I will accept the split.

Spelling: MDD has Nanger notatus, I have the epithet as notata. I looked up the original description of Nanger by Lataste (1885) and can confirm the name is masculine, so notatus is right. Lorenzen et al. (2008) also use notata though.

Ovis (+)

MDD has Ovis gmelini and O. vignei as separate species; I lump them into Ovis aries with subspecies aries (domestic), arkal, and cycloceros. This is a big mess. I am going to follow your classification because clearly you have thought about this more, but below are some more notes.

My classification doesn't make much sense here: I should put the wild and domestic forms in separate species for consistency, and I don't know how I ended up with cycloceros when there are numerous older names synonymized under it.

MDD's main cited source is Rezaei et al. (2010). They show good evidence for separate species orientalis (Turkey to Iran and introduced Mediterranean populations) and vignei (Iran to Pakistan and southern Central Asia). MDD rejects the name orientalis as based on a hybrid and uses the name gmelini for this species instead. MDD cites no source for the claim that orientalis is based on a hybrid. There is apparently a lectotype for orientalis in Moscow, so that can provide a way to resolve the question. MDD doesn't state why the older name musimon Pallas, 1811, isn't used over gmelini Blyth, 1841. However, the wild sheep of Sardinia are probably an ancient feral populations, so perhaps they should go into aries, just like dingos go into Canis familiaris.

The original spelling of gmelini Blyth, 1841, is actually gmelinii, though the form gmelini seems to be used more often. However, some recent authors also use gmelinii, so I would favor reverting to the original spelling. I wasn't able to find any sources explicitly discussing this spelling. Its type locality is "Erzeroom" = Erzurum, eastern Turkey. A few sources I read claim that this is erroneous because wild sheep do not occur there, but at least the map in Rezaei et al. (2010) does show the species there.

The name arabica is in Oman, which doesn't have sheep on the Rezaei et al. map, but I'll trust you that it should go with vignei. The name erskinei is from somewhere in Iran; I'm putting it in gmelini but this needs confirmation. My database had both isphaganica and isphahanica; I looked up the original descriptions and concluded that isphaganica is the original spelling but isphahanica is a justified emendation by prevailing usage.

AI:

Establish the spelling of gmelini/gmelinii.
Establish whether orientalis is available.
Taurotragus vs. Tragelaphus (+)

I recognize Taurotragus as distinct from Tragelaphus, MDD doesn't.

Comments in MDD say that Taurotragus isn't recognized because the Groves & Grubb classification is generally rejected, but Taurotragus was recognized as a genus in Grubb (2005: p. 696, MSW3). However, Hassanin et al. (2018) show that Tragelaphus is paraphyletic relative to Taurotragus, so I will accept the synonymy.

You don't recognize the genus Ammelaphus Heller, 1912, but it's worth noting that Strepsicerastes Knottnerus-Meyer, 1903, appears to be an older name for this group (which is probably worthy of recognition as a subgenus). I haven't seen the original publication to confirm this though.

AI: Consider publishing the Ammelaphus/Strepsicerastes situation.

Camelidae

Lama vs. Vicugna (-)

I have Vicugna as distinct; MDD lumps it under Lama.

The cited reason is low genetic distance. That's probably fair, but I feel like a taxonomic database shouldn't make such a change on its own initiative; it should be proposed in a peer-reviewed paper first.

Cervidae

Elaphurus/Rusa/Rucervus (+)

MDD recognizes Rusa (4 species) and Elaphurus (1 species) as separate genera and puts the species eldii in Rucervus. I have them all as Cervus.

MDD's cited source is Heckeberg (2020). Her molecular tree is on p. 23. The mtDNA tree aligns well with my classification (all genera are monophyletic), but the nDNA tree is quite different. In either case several of the genera in the MDD are nonmonophyletic.

I can't remember what I based my generic classification on, and I can't find a source that uses this classification. I am going to change to your/Heckeberg's classification so at least I'm not making it up. To resolve Cervini into monophyletic genera we're probably going to need a bigger nuclear dataset.

Muntiacus muntjak group (+)

Here MDD recognizes three species based on genetic data: M. malabaricus in S India and Sri Lanka, M. vaginalis in most of India and mainland Southeast Asia, and M. muntjak in insular Southeast Asia/Sundaland. I recognize two species based on some of Groves's work: M. vaginalis in South Asia and M. muntjak in SE Asia, both mainland and islands.

I don't think my classification is tenable so I'm going to change to the MDD one, but want to highlight that the cited source (Martins et al., 2017) explicitly disclaims any taxonomic changes. A more conservative option would be to recognize all three as a single species, as in MSW 3.

Singh et al. (2021) recently recognized another species in this group, Muntiacus aureus. Should MDD follow suit? Ref: Singh, B., Kumar, A., Uniyal, V.P. and Gupta, S.K. 2021. Phylogeography and population genetic structure of red muntjacs: evidence of enigmatic Himalayan red muntjac from India. BMC Ecology and Evolution 21(1):1-15. doi:10.1186/s12862-021-01780-2

An interesting nomenclatural aspect is that malabaricus was named twice, under the same name, by Wroughton and Lydekker, both in 1915. Both databases attribute the name to Lydekker. The type specimen is said to be BMNH 13.8.22.133 by Lydekker and BMNH 13.8.22.103 by Wroughton but I suspect one of those is a typo and it's the same specimen; MDD says the type is 13.8.22.103. The BMNH online catalog also has 103: https://data.nhm.ac.uk/dataset/collection-specimens/resource/05ff2255-c38a-40c9-b657-4ccb55ab2feb/record/3626309 As for the date, Wroughton's name was published on 30 September 1915 according to the issue cover (in BHL). Lydekker (1915) doesn't bear a precise date, but the preface is dated 19 April 1915. I suppose it was published not long after that.

AI: Confirm priority of descriptions for malabaricus

Delphinidae

Globicephala macrorhyncha vs. macrorhynchus (-)

I have this species as macrorhyncha, MDD has macrorhynchus.

This hinges on whether the name is an adjective or a noun in apposition. It sounds like an adjective to me ("long-nosed"), but macrorhynchus is overwhelmingly more common in recent literature, and for names like this sometimes there's a credible argument that the epithet is a noun.

AI: Figure out whether this has been discussed in the literature. MSW 3 only refers to Van Bree (1971).

Hippopotamidae

Malagasy Hippopotamus (-)

MDD recognizes two species of extinct Malagasy Hippopotamus: H. lemerlei and H. madagascariensis (including H. guldbergi). I instead recognize H. laloumena, H. guldbergi, and H. lemerlei, the latter including H. madagascariensis.

H. laloumena may have been excluded from MDD because it is supposed to be older.

This is a confusing situation but I reviewed it in some detail a few years ago and came to the conclusion that the literature indicates that the holotype of H. madagascariensis is indeed a H. lemerlei. See http://hesperomys.com/n/22965

AI: Consider publishing this discussion.

Physeteridae

Physeter catodon vs. macrocephalus (+)

MDD calls the sperm whale P. macrocephalus and I use P. catodon.

I reviewed Husson & Holthuis (1974) and the argument for macrocephalus seems solid under the Code; I am making the change. I didn't do it before because MSW 3 uses catodon, and there hasn't been any published work (that I have seen) making a reasoned argument for change.

AI: Publish this discussion.

Suidae

Sus domesticus vs. Sus scrofa (-)

This is the domestic pig. MDD recognizes it as a species; I don't.

MDD is being consistent here, but there is little precedent for recognizing domestic pigs as a separate species, so I'm going to punt on this one.

Sus bucculentus (+)

I recognize this species; MDD lumps it under Sus scrofa.

The main cited source in MDD is Robins et al. (2006). I don't find that totally convincing, because it is based on mtDNA only and acknowledges that their result may be because of introgression. However, Meijaard & Groves (2013) accepted bucculentus as a synonym of their "Sus moupinensis", which included pigs from a big chunk of the range of Sus scrofa. If Groves doesn't even believe in the species any more, that's enough for me to accept the change. Reference:

Meijaard, E. and Groves, C.P. 2013. New taxonomic proposals for the Sus scrofa group in eastern Asia. Suiform Soundings 12(1):26-30.

Tayassuidae

Catagonus vs. Parachoerus (-!)

MDD places the Chacoan peccary in the genus Catagonus; I use Parachoerus.

This is based on Dutra et al. (2017), a phylogenetic analysis of Tayassuidae. They found that C. wagneri isn't closely related to the type species of Catagonus, which is a Pleistocene fossil, and accordingly revalidated the genus Parachoerus Rusconi, 1930, for wagneri and another fossil species, Parachoerus carlesi. Reference:

Parisi Dutra, R., Casali, D. de M., Missagia, R.V., Gasparini, G.M., Perini, F.A. and Cozzuol, M.A. 2016. Phylogenetic systematics of peccaries (Tayassuidae: Artiodactyla) and a classification of South American tayassuids. Journal of Mammalian Evolution 24(3):345-358. doi:10.1007/s10914-016-9347-8

@liphardt I broke this upon uploading a new mdd.csv file -- I thought because 'ID_number' was changed to 'id' (we want to keep the latter), but my simple fix on the explore.md page did not do the trick. I looked elsewhere in the code, but didn't see reference to this column -- perhaps you know where to look?

Thanks (and sorry!)

@n8upham mentioned -

It could be a separate issue, but the same folks are complaining that they need to add "www" to the URL where they used to be able to just use "mammaldiversity.org" -- mentioning that here in case its also relevant. Any thoughts?

Yeah, I noticed that too. Probably a DNS related issue.

Originally posted by @jhpoelen in #13 (comment)

@jhpoelen can you think of ways in which we could improve our current filter-based search at mammaldiversity.org? I've been discussing with @liphardt but no easy solutions emerged

Some fields of the JSON endpoint we'd like to be able to search include:

• country
• species status (synonym, extinct, extant, domestic)
• common names
• e.g., from recent feedback: "if enter the keyword "United States" in the search bar, I would get the list of all American mammals. Or again, if I put the option "Recently extinct", I have the list of all extinct species. Or else, if I enter "Reindeer" in the search bar, I don't get the species sheet."

In between the taxonomic comparisons I've been doing some work validating publication dates in my database. I'll post here when I find something where the MDD may require a change. To start with:

Cuvier's Tableau élémentaire

Cuvier, G. 1797. Tableau élémentaire de l'histoire naturelle des animaux. Baudouin, 710 pp.

This is usually listed as 1798, but Jackson & Groves (2015) cite it as 1797. Their source is a bibliographic notice by Roux (1797). I verified the source at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5481905n/f1.item# . It is a bibliographic magazine, published on 24 December 1797, that lists the Tableau élémentaire, proving that the book must have been published by then.

Among species currently considered valid, this affects Hemicentetes semispinosus.

See #22, #23, #26, #27, #28, #29 for the previous issues. cc @connorjburgin

The biggest disagreement here is around the platyrrhine generic splits. There is also a difference in family-level taxonomy among the platyrrhines, and a taxonomic mess in Cebus.

Primates

Straightforward accepted changes

• New mergers
  • Aotus hershkovitzi -> A. lemurinus
  • Lagothrix cana, L. lugens, L. poeppigii -> L. lagotricha (see below on spelling of this name)
  • Mico manicorensis -> M. marcai
  • Cercopithecus albogularis, C. doggetti, C. kandti -> C. mitis
  • Semnopithecus dussumieri -> S. hypoleucos
  • Otolemur monteiri -> O. crassicaudatus (minor: MDD has a typo in the comment, montieri)
  • Paragalago nyasae -> P. granti
  • Sciurocheirus cameronensis -> S. alleni (I would suggest MDD add a citation to Mammals of Africa for this species since the current references are old)
  • Eulemur albocollaris -> E. cinereiceps
  • Lepilemur mittermeieri -> L. dorsalis
  • Chiropotes israelita -> C. chiropotes
• New splits
  • Cebus (or Sapajus) cay < C. libidinosus
  • Cebus robustus < C. nigritus
  • Cercocebus lunulatus < C. atys
  • Erythrocebus baumstarki < E. patas
  • Macaca brunnescens < M. ochreata
  • Papio kindae < P. cynocephalus
  • Presbytis percura, P. robinsoni < P. femoralis
  • Hylobates abbotti, H. funereus < H. muelleri
  • Eulemur flavifrons < E. macaco
  • Eulemur rufifrons < E. rufus
  • Nycticebus hilleri < N. coucang
• Spelling changes
  • Presbytis sumatranus -> P. sumatrana
  • Rhinopithecus roxellanus -> R. roxellana
  • Lepilemur randrianasoli -> L. randrianasoloi
  • Lepilemur sahamalazensis -> L. sahamalaza (for these two, missed the nomenclatural change)
• Other changes
  • Cercopithecus dryas -> Chlorocebus dryas
  • Galago gabonensis -> Sciurocheirus gabonensis
  • Nycticebus pygmaeus -> Xanthonycticebus (though I would have preferred a subgenus)
• New species
  • Mico schneideri
  • Cheracebus aquinoi
• Recently extinct species
  • Archaeolemur edwardsi
  • Megaladapis madagascariensis
  • Palaeopropithecus ingens
  • Xenothrix mcgregori

Patronym changes (Pteropus gilliardi-type) that we're provisionally keeping unchanged:

• Piliocolobus waldroni vs. waldronae
• Lepilemur ahmansoni vs. ahmansonorum
• Lepilemur grewcocki vs. grewcockorum
• Lepilemur hubbardi vs. hubbardorum
• Lepilemur jamesi vs. jamesorum
• Lepilemur wrighti vs. wrightae (interestingly you don't adopt Lepilemur tymerlachsonorum, possibly because it was not directly based on a name)
• Noticed that you did change Chiropotes utahickae to utahicki, citing CMW. I haven't seen that book so I'm curious what the motivation was. I checked the original description and it was definitely named after a woman.
• Same for Aotus nancymaae vs. nancymai.

New World monkey genera (+?)

There have been several generic splits proposed recently among New World monkeys:

• Sapajus from Cebus
  • Proposal: Lynch Alfaro, J.W., de Sousa e Silva Júnior, J. and Rylands, A.B. 2012. How different are robust and gracile capuchin monkeys? An argument for the use of Sapajus and Cebus. American Journal of Primatology 74(4):273-286. doi:10.1002/ajp.22007
    • Evidence: Strong morphological differentiation; sympatry; behavioral differences
• Cheracebus and Plecturocebus from Callicebus
  • Proposal: Byrne, H., Rylands, A.B., Carneiro, J.C., Lynch Alfaro, J.W., Bertuol, F., Silva, M.N.F. da, Messias, M., Groves, C.P., Mittermeier, R.A., Farias, I.P., Hrbek, T., Schneider, H., Sampaio, I. and Boubli, J.P. 2016-03-01. Phylogenetic relationships of the New World titi monkeys (Callicebus): first appraisal of taxonomy based on molecular evidence. Frontiers in Zoology 13(10):1-25. doi:10.1186/s12983-016-0142-4
    • Evidence: time-based; the three clades diverged in the Miocene.
• Leontocebus, Oedipomidas, and Tamarinus from Saguinus
  • Proposal (Leontocebus only): Rylands, A.B., Heymann, E.W., Lynch Alfaro, J.W., Buckner, J.C., Roos, C., Matauschek, C., Boubli, J.P., Sampaio, R. and Mittermeier, R.A. 2016. Taxonomic review of the New World tamarins (Primates: Callitrichidae). Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 177(4):1003-1028. doi:10.1111/zoj.12386
    • Evidence: divergence time; sympatry; small size
  • Proposal (adding Oedipomidas and Tamarinus): Brcko, I.C., Carneiro, J., Ruiz-García, M., Boubli, J.P., de Sousa e Silva Júnior, J., Farias, I.P., Hrbek, T., Schneider, H. and Sampaio, I. 2022. Phylogenetics and an updated taxonomic status of the tamarins (Callitrichinae, Cebidae). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 173:107504. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2022.107504
    • Evidence: divergence time, I believe.
    • MDD doesn't cite this paper.
  • Pushback: Garbino, G.S.T. and Martins-Junior, A.M.G. 2018. Phenotypic evolution in marmoset and tamarin monkeys (Cebidae, Callitrichinae) and a revised genus-level classification. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 118:156-171. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2017.10.002

In all cases, there is no doubt about the monophyly of the genus that was split up.

I currently accept none of these splits; MDD accepts the Cebus and Callicebus split but not the Saguinus ones.

I'm not fond of any of these splits. The arguments about ecological and behavioral distinctness are fine I suppose, but as long as there is no agreed-upon definition of a genus they aren't very convincing. The divergence time arguments at least give hope for a consistent criterion for recognizing genera, but when people use this argument they usually cite Goodman et al. (1998). That paper proposed merging Cacajao and Chiropotes (and Homo and Pan), and nobody has wanted to follow that, so divergence time arguments also feel like special pleading to me.

However, these are subjective decisions and most of these splits seem to have been broadly accepted, so I'll probably have to follow suit. I'm not sure I see a principled reason to accept the Cebus and Callicebus splits but not the Saguinus one.

Atelidae

Alouatta villosa vs. A. pigra (+)

I use Alouatta villosa, MDD uses A. pigra.

I don't find the arguments for pigra very compelling, but I'll accept this one for consistency with the literature.

Lagothrix lagothricha vs. lagotricha (-)

I use lagotricha, MDD uses lagothricha.

The original spelling is lagotricha. A lot of the literature also uses this spelling (it actually gets more hits in Google Scholar than lagothricha), so I think we should stick with the original.

Callithrichidae

Callitrichinae vs. Callitrichidae vs. Callithrichidae (?)

I put the marmosets and tamarins in subfamily Callithrichinae of Cebidae; MDD recognizes a separate family Callitrichidae.

Looking at recent phylogenetic studies, my version of Cebidae is paraphyletic because Aotus falls within the cebinae-callitrichine clade, so something will need to change: either Aotus should go into Cebidae or Callitrichinae should become a family. MDD currently chooses the latter option. However, several recent sources (e.g., Wang et al., 2019; Silvestro et al., 2019) choose the former option instead. I like that because it creates a more informative classification; the three-family option leaves us without a name for the Cebidae/Callitrichidae/Aotidae clade. It's a subjective decision so I am happy to go with either; I'm curious what the motivation is for MDD's classification.

Separately, there is an issue of spelling. The genus name is Callithrix with an h, so I use the subfamily name Callithrichinae, but the family-group name is almost invariably spelled without an h in the literature (including in MDD), as Callitrichidae or Callitrichinae. If there's a rule of Greek grammar that leads to this change, I'm not aware of it. However, this spelling goes back to Thomas (1903) who first named the family.

AI: Confirm and publish about the spelling of the family name.

Cebidae

Cebus sensu stricto (-)

Within Cebus sensu stricto (i.e. excluding Sapajus), I recognize four species, and MDD recognizes an additional 11 following Boubli et al. (2012), while noting that the taxonomy is highly contentious. I haven't fully attempted to understand all the disagreements here, but I noticed that Ruiz-García et al. (2018) reviewed Ecuadorian Cebus more recently and found no support for the species status of Cebus aequatorialis. All of these studies have just been based on mtDNA too, which might be muddying things up more.

I'm open to changing to the many-species classification, but wanted to hear your thoughts first.

Cercopithecidae

Lophocebus species (-)

I recognize six species of Lophocebus; MDD merges them into only two, citing the Red List, which in turn says that this was the consensus at a workshop. However, both HMW and Mammals of Africa list the full six species. I'd like to stick with that until there is a real published study to the contrary.

Piliocolobus lulindicus (-)

MDD recognizes this species as distinct from P. foai; I don't. Mammals of Africa has foai and lulindicus as separate subspecies of rufomitratus; HMW has foai as a species with lulindicus as a junior synonym.

MDD cites the Red List, but the account essentially says that it is recognized as distinct because it is threatened. That's not a convincing taxonomic argument.

Trachypithecus crepuscula -> T. crepusculus (+)

I have crepuscula, MDD has crepusculus.

I'll accept the change for now since crepusculus is common in the literature, but I'm not convinced this is right since I can't find an adjective crepusculus. There is a Latin word crepusculum "darkness" but I'm not sure how it applies; Elliot described the fur as pale when he named the species.

AI: Confirm and maybe change back to crepuscula.

Cheirogaleidae

Microcebus mittermeieri (-)

I lump this species under M. lehilahytsara; MDD recognizes it, saying that further work is needed to confirm the synonymy.

MDD doesn't cite the reference I was using for the synonymy (Poelstra et al., 2021). I thought the genetic evidence in that paper was convincing, but I'm happy to add the species back if you disagree.

Ref: Poelstra, J.W., Salmona, J., Tiley, G.P., Schüßler, D., Blanco, M.B., Andriambeloson, J.B., Bouchez, O., Campbell, C.R., Etter, P.D., Hohenlohe, P.A., Hunnicutt, K.E., Iribar, A., Johnson, E.A., Kappeler, P.M., Larsen, P.A., Manzi, S., Ralison, J.M., Randrianambinina, B., Rasoloarison, R.M., Rasolofoson, D.W., Stahlke, A.R., Weisrock, D.W., Williams, R.C., Chikhi, L., Louis, E.E., Radespiel, U., Yoder, A.D. and Esselstyn, J.A. 2021. Cryptic patterns of speciation in cryptic primates: microendemic mouse lemurs and the multispecies coalescent. Systematic Biology 70(2):203-218. doi:10.1093/sysbio/syaa053

Indriidae

Avahi ramanantsoavani vs. ramanantsoavanai (-)

I use the spelling without the -a-, MDD includes it.

The former (ramanantsoavani) is the original and correct spelling. The first usage of the ramanantsoavanai spelling which I have found is in Markolf et al. (2011), where it looks accidental (they also misspell peyrierasi a few lines up). Possibly this spelling change was intentional since the species was named after Georges Ramanantsoavana, but I don't see a justification for changing the name; it's legitimate to elide the -a when forming a patronym.

Ref: Markolf, M., Brameier, M. and Kappeler, P.M. 2011-12. On species delimitation: Yet another lemur species or just genetic variation?. BMC Evolutionary Biology 11(126):1-7. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-11-216

AI: Confirm and publish

Pitheciidae

I was happy to see we ended up with the same classification for Cacajao. I had to dig quite a bit a few weeks ago to understand what's going on here; I wrote up my notes at http://hesperomys.com/n/46731 (bottom of the page). I think it may be worth publishing about this. Though now I see that Silva et al. (2013) map melanocephalus, ouakary, hosomi, and ayresi all in different places, so may be it's more complicated than I thought.

I'll use this thread to list places where I think MDD should change an author citation. My script currently finds 300 author differences, but I'll probably be able to get rid of a few more as I go through them in detail.

Note that the lists below include all the names that I tried based on the data in my database; they also include the MDD species number.

Some of these are pretty nitpicky issues, so sorry for that! However, being consistent will make it easier to cross-reference our databases in the future.

Different people

Listing here cases where we actually have different authors, not just different ways to express the same author's name:

• Desmarest (1 differences)
  • Desmarest (MDD) vs. Henri-Marie Ducrotay de Blainville (1777–1850; French zoologist; checked; french) (tried: Blainville, H.-M. D. Blainville, H.-M. Blainville, H. Ducrotay Blainville, de Blainville, H.-M. D. de Blainville, H.-M. de Blainville, H. Ducrotay de Blainville) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1006162; Madoqua saltiana; Author 1; original citation: Blainville (1816); authority)
  • This article is by Blainville. Desmarest also mentioned this species in 1816, but he refers to the Blainville paper by page, so that must have been published earlier. p. 192 in Desmarest, A.G. 1816. ANTILOPE, Antilope. Pp. 178–208 in Anonymous (eds.). Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle. Nouvelle Édition. Tome II. Deterville, 592 pp.
• E. A. W. Zimmermann (1 differences)
  • E. A. W. Zimmermann (MDD) vs. Johann Friedrich Gmelin (1748–1804; German naturalist; checked; german) (tried: Gmelin, J. F. Gmelin, J. Gmelin, J. Friedrich Gmelin) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1005852; Pteronura brasiliensis; Author 1; original citation: Gmelin (1788); authority)
  • The Zimmermann 1780 version of this name was rejected by the Commission. International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. 1957. Direction 79. Substitution on the Official List of Specific Names in Zoology of the specific name brasiliensis Gmelin (J.F.), 1788, as published in the combination Mustela lutris var. brasiliensis, for the specific name sambachii Gray (J.E.), 1837, as published in the combination Pteronura sambachii (Class Mammalia) (Direction supplementary to Opinion 384). Opinions and Declarations Rendered by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature 16(24):455-464.
• E. T. Bennett (1 differences)
  • E. T. Bennett (MDD) vs. Juan Ignacio Molina (1740–1829; Chilean naturalist; checked; spanish) (tried: Molina, J. I. Molina, J. Molina, J. Ignacio Molina) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1001231; Chinchilla lanigera; Author 1; original citation: Molina (1782); authority)
  • I'm going against most of the recent literature here, but it seems Molina's name was indeed based on a chinchilla, and if so it is the oldest name for the species.
• Erxleben (1 differences)
  • Erxleben (MDD) vs. Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber (1739–1810; German naturalist; checked; german) (tried: Schreber, J. C. D. Schreber, J. Schreber, von Schreber, J. C. D. von Schreber, J. von Schreber) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1005820; Martes foina; Author 1; original citation: Schreber (1776); authority)
  • Discovered this while going over Schreber's book: his plate of Mustela Foina predates Erxleben's book. Indeed, Erxleben's synonymy lists Schreber's plate, confirming that it was published later.
• F. Cuvier (1 differences)
  • F. Cuvier (MDD) vs. Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1805–1861; French naturalist; checked; general) (tried: Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, I. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1005931; Tremarctos ornatus; Author 1; original citation: Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1827); authority)
  • You cite this to Cuvier (1825), but that name is unavailable as there is no generic name: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/44522891
• G. Cuvier (2 differences)
  • G. Cuvier (MDD) vs. René Primevère Lesson (1794–1849; French naturalist; checked; general) (tried: Lesson, R. Lesson, R. P. Lesson, R. Primevère Lesson, R.P. Lesson) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1006441; Steno bredanensis; Author 1; authority)
  • Attribution to Lesson follows Smeenk, C. 2018. A chronological review of the nomenclature of Delphinus rostratus Shaw, 1801 and Delphinus bredanensis (Lesson, 1828). Lutra 61(1):197-214. URL: https://www.zoogdiervereniging.nl/publicaties/2017/lutra-611smeenk2018
  • G. Cuvier (MDD) vs. Aléxandre Brongniart (unchecked; unspecified) (tried: A. Brongniart, Brongniart) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1005891; Procyon cancrivorus; Author 1; original citation: Brongniart (1792); authority)
  • Brongniart (1792) as the author of this name follows: Hershkovitz, P. 1959. Nomenclature and taxonomy of the Neotropical mammals described by Olfers, 1818. Journal of Mammalogy 40(3):337-353. JSTOR 1376558
• J. A. Allen (1 differences)
  • J. A. Allen (MDD) vs. Oldfield Thomas (1858–1929; English mammalogist; checked; general) (tried: O. Thomas, Thomas) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1001121; Sylvilagus andinus; Author 1; original citation: Thomas (1897); authority)
  • MDD has the wrong authority here, it's by Thomas (1897) not Allen (1912)
• J. A. Wagner (1 differences)
  • J. A. Wagner (MDD) vs. Rudolph Wagner (unchecked; general) (tried: R. Wagner, Wagner) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1001183; Prolagus sardus; Author 1; original citation: Wagner (1829); authority)
  • MDD got the wrong Wagner
    

Name order

• Farias (1 differences)
  • Farias (MDD) vs. Tomas Hrbek (unchecked; unspecified) (tried: Hrbek, T. Hrbek) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1000802; Mico munduruku; Author 3; original citation: Costa-Araújo et al. (2019); authority)
• Hrbek (1 differences)
  • Hrbek (MDD) vs. Izeni Pires Farias (unchecked; unspecified) (tried: Farias, I. Farias, I. P. Farias, I. Pires Farias, I.P. Farias) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1000802; Mico munduruku; Author 2; original citation: Costa-Araújo et al. (2019); authority)
  • The authors for the name are given as "R Costa-Araújo, IP Farias & T Hrbek"; MDD switches the order of the last two

A

• Abreu (1 differences)
  • Abreu (MDD) vs. Edson Fiedler de Abreu-Júnior (unchecked; portuguese) (tried: Abreu-Júnior, E. F. Abreu-Júnior, E. Abreu-Júnior, E. Fiedler Abreu-Júnior, de Abreu-Júnior, E. F. de Abreu-Júnior, E. de Abreu-Júnior, E. Fiedler de Abreu-Júnior) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1006604; Myotis moratellii; Author 4; original citation: Novaes et al. (2021); authority)
  • MDD has him as "Abreu-Júnior" on Brucepattersonius nebulosus; would recommend using that form consistently
• Acosta S. (1 differences)
  • Acosta S. (MDD) vs. Luis Hernán Acosta Salvatierra (unchecked; spanish) (tried: Acosta, L. H. Acosta, L. Acosta, L. Hernán Acosta) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1006578; Eptesicus langeri; Author 1; original citation: Acosta et al. (2021); authority)
  • MDD has him as just "Acosta" on Eumops chimaera, would recommend using that
• Akharirad (1 differences)
  • Akharirad (MDD) vs. Safie Akbarirad (unchecked; unspecified) (tried: Akbarirad, S. Akbarirad) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1006688; Calomyscus behzadi; Author 1; original citation: Dezhman et al. (2021); authority)
  • MDD has a typo
• Amaral (1 differences)
  • Amaral (MDD) vs. Marília Kerr do Amaral (unchecked; unspecified) (tried: Kerr do Amaral, M. Kerr do Amaral) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1000891; Plecturocebus vieirai; Author 3; original citation: Gualda-Barros et al. (2012); authority)
  • With Brazilian names it's often hard to figure out where the family name starts. The email address listed for this author on the paper is "mariliakerr@", so I assume "Kerr" is part of her family name not her given name.
• Anwarali Khan (1 differences)
  • Anwarali Khan (MDD) vs. Faisal Ali Anwarali Khan (unchecked; general) (tried: Khan, F. A. A. Khan, F. Khan) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1005332; Murina guilleni; Author 5; original citation: Soisook et al. (2013); authority)
  • I believe the family name is just "Khan". You have him as "Khan" on Hipposideros kunzi.

B

• B. A. Robertson (1 differences)
  • B. A. Robertson (MDD) vs. Brittani A.D. Robertson (unchecked; general) (tried: Robertson, B. A. D. Robertson, B. Robertson, B. A.D. Robertson) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1000933; Cheirogaleus grovesi; Author 6; original citation: McLain et al. (2017); authority)
  • The third initial appears on this paper, so I would recommend adding it.
• B. D. Patterson (1 differences)
  • B. D. Patterson (MDD) vs. Bryan Patterson (1909–1979; American paleontologist; checked; general) (tried: Patterson, B. Patterson) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1003839; Solenodon marcanoi; Author 1; original citation: Patterson (1962); authority)
  • You got the wrong Patterson here. Bruce D. Patterson is still alive and I believe active at the FMNH, but this one is by the late paleontologist Bryan Patterson.
• Ba (1 differences)
  • Ba (MDD) vs. Khalilou Bâ (unchecked; unspecified) (tried: Bâ, K. Bâ) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1002984; Taterillus tranieri; Author 4; original citation: Dobigny et al. (2003); authority)
  • Spelled "Ba" on this paper, but "Bâ" more recently, e.g. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1463-6409.2011.00501.x, so I would prefer to use the "Bâ" spelling consistently
• Barriere (1 differences)
  • Barriere (MDD) vs. Patrick Barrière (unchecked; general) (tried: Barrière, P. Barrière) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1003463; Hylomyscus walterverheyeni; Author 3; original citation: Nicolas et al. (2008); authority)
  • Spelled "Barriere" on this paper, but you have him as "Barrière" on Congosorex verheyeni and Sylvisorex akaibei, so let's use that spelling consistently
• Bažanov (1 differences)
  • Bažanov (MDD) vs. Bazhanov (unchecked; unspecified) (tried: Bazhanov) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1001534; Selevinia betpakdalaensis; Author 2; authority)
  • This seems to be the only time MDD uses diacritics to transliterate a Russian name. "Bazhanov" is a more standard transliteration.
• Bi (1 differences)
  • Bi (MDD) vs. Sery Gonedelé Bi (unchecked; unspecified) (tried: Gonedelé Bi, S. Gonedelé Bi) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1006570; Dendrohyrax interfluvialis; Author 9; original citation: Oates et al. (2021); authority)
  • Family name seems to be "Gonedelé Bi" based on https://theconversation.com/profiles/sery-ernest-gonedele-bi-1202099
• Boo Liat Lim (1 differences)
  • Boo Liat Lim (MDD) vs. Boo Liat Lim (unchecked; chinese) (tried: Lim Boo Liat) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1004668; Rhinolophus chiewkweeae; Author 2; original citation: Yoshiyuki & Lim (2005); authority)
  • I think MDD should use "Lim Boo Liat" for consistency with other Chinese-style names.
• Buchanan (1 differences)
  • Buchanan (MDD) vs. Buchannan (unchecked; unspecified) (tried: Buchannan) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1005158; Mops plicatus; Author 1; authority)
  • Spelled "Buchannan" in the original: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/12897934

C

• Cadenilla (1 differences)
  • Cadenilla (MDD) vs. Richard Cadenillas (unchecked; unspecified) (tried: Cadenillas, R. Cadenillas) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1006516; Octodon ricardojeda; Author 4; original citation: D'Elía et al. (2020); authority)
  • MDD has a typo
• Caldara Junior (1 differences)
  • Caldara Junior (MDD) vs. Vilacio Caldara Júnior (unchecked; general) (tried: Caldara Júnior, V. Caldara Júnior) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1001251; Coendou speratus; Author 6; original citation: Mendes Pontes et al. (2013); authority)
  • Spelled with the accent mark in another paper. I think that's the correct spelling in Portuguese, so let's use "Júnior". Leite, Y.L.R., Caldara Júnior, V., Loss, A.C., Costa, L.P., Melo, É.R.A., Gadelha, J.R. and Mendes Pontes, A.R. 2011. Designation of a neotype for the Brazilian porcupine, Coendou prehensilis (Linnaeus, 1758). Zootaxa 2791:30-40. URL: http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/2011/f/z02791p040f.pdf
• Cehn Weicai (2 differences)
  • Cehn Weicai (MDD) vs. Wei-cai Chen (unchecked; pinyin) (tried: Chen Weicai) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1002117; Neodon medogensis; Author 10; original citation: Liu et al. (2016); authority)
  • Cehn Weicai (MDD) vs. Wei-cai Chen (unchecked; pinyin) (tried: Chen Weicai) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1002119; Neodon nyalamensis; Author 10; original citation: Liu et al. (2016); authority)
  • Typo in MDD
• Colindres (1 differences)
  • Colindres (MDD) vs. Julio E. Mérida Colindres (unchecked; unspecified) (tried: Mérida Colindres, J. E. Mérida Colindres, J. Mérida Colindres, J. E. Mérida Colindres) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1004231; Sorex cruzi; Author 2; original citation: Andino-Madrid et al. (2020); authority)
  • Spanish-style name, so "Colindres" is likely the second (maternal surname). His email address as listed on the paper is "juliomerid@".
• Cuartas (2 differences)
  • Cuartas (MDD) vs. Carlos Arturo Cuartas-Calle (unchecked; spanish) (tried: Cuartas-Calle, C. A. Cuartas-Calle, C. Cuartas-Calle, C. Arturo Cuartas-Calle) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1004876; Carollia monohernandezi; Author 2; original citation: Muñoz et al. (2004); authority)
  • Cuartas (MDD) vs. Carlos Arturo Cuartas-Calle (unchecked; spanish) (tried: Cuartas-Calle, C. A. Cuartas-Calle, C. Cuartas-Calle, C. Arturo Cuartas-Calle) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1004793; Saccopteryx antioquensis; Author 2; original citation: Muñoz & Cuartas-Calle (2001); authority)
  • Both forms of the name appear on some of his papers. I prefer to use the fuller form but I guess this could go either way.

D

• Dao Van Tiên (2 differences)
  • Dao Van Tiên (MDD) vs. Đào Văn Tiến (1920–1995; Vietnamese biologist; checked; vietnamese) (tried: Đào Văn Tiến, Dao Van Tien) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1000705; Trachypithecus hatinhensis; Author 1; authority)
  • Dao Van Tiên (MDD) vs. Đào Văn Tiến (1920–1995; Vietnamese biologist; checked; vietnamese) (tried: Đào Văn Tiến, Dao Van Tien) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1006699; Xanthonycticebus intermedius; Author 1; authority)
  • I would prefer to use the fully diacritic version, which is how you'd actually write it in Vietnamese, or the fully Latinized version "Dao Van Tien", but preferably not MDD's version that just keeps one of the diacritics.
• DeKay (1 differences)
  • DeKay (MDD) vs. James Ellsworth De Kay (1792–1851; American zoologist; checked; general) (tried: De Kay, J. E. De Kay, J. De Kay, J. Ellsworth De Kay) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1002099; Microtus richardsoni; Author 1; original citation: De Kay (1842); authority)
  • Can go either way here, but it's spelled as two words on the title page of this book, and Wikipedia also spells it this way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ellsworth_De_Kay
• D’Elía (1 differences)
  • D’Elía (MDD) vs. Guillermo D'Elía (Uruguayan mammalogist; checked; spanish) (tried: D'Elía, G. D'Elía) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1006643; Cheracebus aquinoi; Author 2; original citation: Rengifo et al. (2022); authority)
  • MDD uses a curly quote character, for consistency use a plain apostrophe

E

• E. M. Santos (1 differences)
  • E. M. Santos (MDD) vs. Eduardo Marques Santos Júnior (unchecked; unspecified) (tried: Santos Júnior, E. M. Santos Júnior, E. Santos Júnior, E. Marques Santos Júnior) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1000887; Plecturocebus parecis; Author 12; original citation: Gusmão et al. (2019); authority)
  • Listed as "Eduardo Marques Santos Júnior" on the paper, so I'm going with that. I have no other publications by this author.

F

• F. A. Meyer (1 differences)
  • F. A. Meyer (MDD) vs. F.A.A. Meyer (unchecked; unspecified) (tried: Meyer, F. A. A. Meyer, F. Meyer) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1000189; Phascogale tapoatafa; Author 1; authority)
  • Please add the third initial
• Fils (1 differences)
  • Fils (MDD) vs. Eric Moïse Bakwo Fils (unchecked; unspecified) (tried: Bakwo Fils, E. M. Bakwo Fils, E. Bakwo Fils, E. Moïse Bakwo Fils) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1006522; Myotis nimbaensis; Author 3; original citation: Simmons et al. (2021); authority)
  • I think "Bakwo" is part of the family name, "Fils" is French for "son". e.g. https://zoobank.org/Authors/A971C795-09AE-49DF-BB2C-51F397E18D0F

G

• Gergorin (2 differences)
  • Gergorin (MDD) vs. Renato Gregorin (unchecked; general) (tried: Gregorin, R. Gregorin) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1005167; Cynomops freemani; Author 2; original citation: Moras et al. (2018); authority)
  • Gergorin (MDD) vs. Renato Gregorin (unchecked; general) (tried: Gregorin, R. Gregorin) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1005173; Cynomops tonkigui; Author 2; original citation: Moras et al. (2018); authority)
  • Typo in MDD
• Gutierrez (1 differences)
  • Gutierrez (MDD) vs. Eliécer E. Gutiérrez (unchecked; unspecified) (tried: E. E. Gutiérrez, E. Gutiérrez, E.E. Gutiérrez, Gutiérrez) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1005390; Myotis clydejonesi; Author 5; original citation: Moratelli et al. (2017); authority)
  • The name appears with the accent on the paper

H

• Hsia Wupinq (1 differences)
  • Hsia Wupinq (MDD) vs. Wu-Ping Hsia (unchecked; unspecified) (tried: Hsia, W.-P. Hsia) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1001962; Orientallactaga balikunica; Author 1; original citation: Hsia & Fang (1964); authority)
  • Typo in MDD
• Huang Chunchia (1 differences)
  • Huang Chunchia (MDD) vs. Joe Chun-Chia Huang (unchecked; unspecified) (tried: Huang, J. C.-C. Huang, J. Chun-Chia Huang, J. Huang, J.C.-C. Huang) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1005597; Glischropus aquilus; Author 6; original citation: Csorba et al. (2015); authority)
  • Given that he uses the given name "Joe" I am not treating this author as a Chinese-style name, but open to changing what I do here.

J

• J. S. Silva (5 differences)
  • J. S. Silva (MDD) vs. José de Sousa e Silva Júnior (Brazilian primatologist; checked; portuguese) (tried: J. S. Silva Júnior, J. S. e Silva Júnior, J. Silva Júnior, J. e Silva Júnior, Silva Júnior, e Silva Júnior) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1000804; Mico rondoni; Author 4; original citation: Ferrari et al. (2010); authority)
  • J. S. Silva (MDD) vs. José de Sousa e Silva Júnior (Brazilian primatologist; checked; portuguese) (tried: J. S. Silva Júnior, J. S. e Silva Júnior, J. Silva Júnior, J. e Silva Júnior, Silva Júnior, e Silva Júnior) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1000805; Mico saterei; Author 1; original citation: Silva Júnior & Noronha (1998); authority)
  • J. S. Silva (MDD) vs. José de Sousa e Silva Júnior (Brazilian primatologist; checked; portuguese) (tried: J. S. Silva Júnior, J. S. e Silva Júnior, J. Silva Júnior, J. e Silva Júnior, Silva Júnior, e Silva Júnior) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1006579; Mico schneideri; Author 2; original citation: Costa-Araújo et al. (2021); authority)
  • J. S. Silva (MDD) vs. José de Sousa e Silva Júnior (Brazilian primatologist; checked; portuguese) (tried: J. S. Silva Júnior, J. S. e Silva Júnior, J. Silva Júnior, J. e Silva Júnior, Silva Júnior, e Silva Júnior) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1000880; Plecturocebus miltoni; Author 3; original citation: Dalponte et al. (2014); authority)
  • J. S. Silva (MDD) vs. José de Sousa e Silva Júnior (Brazilian primatologist; checked; portuguese) (tried: J. S. Silva Júnior, J. S. e Silva Júnior, J. Silva Júnior, J. e Silva Júnior, Silva Júnior, e Silva Júnior) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1006644; Cacajao amuna; Author 10; original citation: Silva et al. (2022); authority)
  • There is a lot of variation in how this name is written, but I usually see him cited as "Silva Júnior"
• Jilong Cheng (1 differences)
  • Jilong Cheng (MDD) vs. Ji-long Cheng (unchecked; pinyin) (tried: Cheng Jilong) (Hesperomys) (MDD#1003593; Niviventer gladiusmaculus; Author 6; original citation: Ge et al. (2018); authority)
  • MDD switched the order of the family name and given name on this Chinese name. Other Chinese authors on the name have the family name first, as is your general convention.

(To be continued)

Any idea @jhpoelen ?
From user in Alaska (multiple browser types):

Thanks

Following #22, #23, #26. This covers a few smaller orders, which happen to include most of the marsupials. There were relatively few disagreements, mostly around spelling.

Cingulata

Straightforward accepted changes:

• New splits
  • Cabassous squamicaudis < C. unicinctus
  • Dasypus beniensis, D. pastasae < D. kappleri
• New mergers
  • Dasypus hybridus -> D. septemcinctus

Dasyuromorphia

Straightforward accepted changes:

• New mergers
  • Phascolosorex brevicaudatus -> P. dorsalis (another Helgen (2007) suggestion that hasn't received support)
  • Sminthopsis aitkeni -> S. fuliginosa
• New splits
  • Sminthopsis froggatti, S. stalkeri < S. macroura
• Spelling changes:
  • Dasycercus cristicaudus -> cristicauda (best interpreted as a noun in apposition)
• Recently extinct species
  • Thylacinus cynocephalus

Dasyuridae

Murexia melanura vs. melanurus (-)

The original spelling (in combination with Phascogale) was melanura. It was melanurus when the species was in Murexechinus, but Murexia is feminine, so melanura is correct.

Murexia hageni and M. wilhelmina (+)

I have these as valid, MDD does not.

These were also based on Helgen (2007), like Hipposideros fasensis. I don't think these splits have been accepted so I'm synonymizing them.

I found a Wikipedia article on a related species "Murexia xenochromus": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murexia_xenochromus, which appears to be a hoax. I'm proposing it for deletion.

Myoictis wavica vs. wavicus (-)

I have wavica, MDD has wavicus.

The genus name comes from Greek ἴκτις iktis, which is feminine. The specific epithet looks based on the type locality Wau, which would make it an adjective.

However, Myoictis melas wavicus was the original name and I don't think anybody has ever used wavica.

AI: Confirm and publish.

Didelphimorphia

Didelphidae

Caluromysiops irrupta vs. irruptus (-)

I have irruptus, MDD has irrupta.

Like Myoictis wavica, this is a case where I think the grammatical evidence is strong, but I am not convinced it's worth disrupting the established nomenclature. (-ops names are always masculine per the Code; irrupta is clearly an adjective.)

AI: Confirm and publish.

Marmosa waterhousei vs. waterhousii (-)

I have waterhousei, MDD has waterhousii, which is the original spelling.

I follow Voss (2022:15), who argues that waterhousei is a justified emendation through prevailing usage.

Ref: Voss, R.S. 2022. An annotated checklist of Recent opossums (Mammalia: Didelphidae). Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 455:1-74.

Diprotodontia

Straightforward accepted changes

• New mergers
  • Thylogale lanata -> T. brownii
  • Trichosurus arnhemensis -> T. vulpecula
• New splits
  • Ailurops furvus < A. ursinus
  • Strigocuscus sangirensis < S. celebensis
  • Petauroides armillatus, P. minor < P. volans
  • Phalanger breviceps < P. orientalis (though I haven't yet seen the source)
• Spelling changes
  • Onychogalea fraenata -> O. frenata
  • Pseudochirulus schlegeli -> P. schlegelii
• Omitted recently extinct species
  • Dactylopsila kambuayai (though apparently it's not extinct)
  • Bettongia pusilla
• Other changes
  • Strigocuscus pelengensis -> Phalanger pelengensis

Articles not yet seen:

• Kealy, S., Donnellan, S. C., Mitchell, K. J., Herrera, M., Aplin, K., O'Connor, S., & Louys, J. Phylogenetic relationships of the cuscuses (Diprotodontia: Phalangeridae) of island Southeast Asia and Melanesia based on the mitochondrial ND2 gene. Australian Mammalogy, 42(3), 266-276.

Macropodidae

Thylogale browni vs. brownii (-)

I have brownii, MDD has browni.

The brownii spelling is original, but most (though not all) recent authors use browni.

Petauridae

Petaurus biacensis and P. papuanus (-/+)

I have Petaurus papuanus as a species, including P. biacensis; MDD has biacensis as valid and lumps papuanus in P. notatus.

This is a hard case. Cremona et al. (2021) recognized P. notatus and P. ariel as valid for some Australian populations previously assigned to P. breviceps, leaving P. breviceps restricted to a small area of eastern Australia, but ignored the New Guinea populations. I got around that by declaring the oldest name from New Guinea, papuanus, to be a valid species, though nobody has explicitly suggested that; you instead lumped them in the geographically nearest species, P. notatus, even though Malekian et al. (2010) found the New Guinea populations to be distant from P. notatus (their AUS2 clade). Both options are problematic. I'd like to propose an alternative: put the New Guinea material back in P. breviceps until somebody gets around to formally separating them. That way, at least their species name only has to change once.

I don't know however why I lumped P. biacensis into P. papuanus. I'm going to move it back to a species.

Pseudocheiridae

Pseudochirops dahlii vs. Petropseudes (-)

I have Petropseudes as a synonym of Pseudochirops, you have it as a genus.

My source is Meredith et al. (2010), who found Pseudochirops to be paraphyletic with respect to Petropseudes and accordingly merged the two genera.

Ref: Meredith, R.W., Mendoza, M.A., Roberts, K.K., Westerman, M. and Springer, M.S. 2010. A phylogeny and timescale for the evolution of Pseudocheiridae (Marsupialia: Diprotodontia) in Australia and New Guinea. Journal of Mammalian Evolution 17(2):75-99. doi:10.1007/s10914-010-9129-7

Continuing #22, #23, #26, #27, #28, #29, #31, #32 cc @connorjburgin.

I always got the impression that squirrels were more taxonomically stable compared to other small mammals, but I guess that's no longer the case. I'm accepting almost all of the changes in MDD, but we'll have to talk more about Sciurini.

Rodentia: Sciuromorpha

Straightforward accepted changes

• Spelling changes
  • Dryomys nitedulus -> nitedula
  • Funisciurus isabellus -> isabella
• New mergers
  • Callosciurus albescens -> C. notatus
  • Hylopetes lepidus -> H. sagitta
  • Tamiasciurus mearnsi -> T. douglasii
  • Urocitellus endemicus -> U. brunneus
• New splits
  • Dremomys ornatus < D. rufigenis
  • Sundasciurus natunensis < S. lowii
  • Sundasciurus robinsoni < S. lowii
  • Hylopetes electilis < H. phayrei
  • Priapomys leonardi < Hylopetes alboniger
  • Petaurista lena < P. alborufus
  • Petaurista albiventer < P. petaurista
  • Petaurista caniceps, P. marica, P. sibylla < P. elegans
  • Petaurista grandis, P. hainana, P. yunnanensis < P. philippiensis (I'm accepting your Petaurista classification as it reflects the recent literature, but I feel there's a lot more work to be done and there will be more changes)
  • Tamiasciurus fremonti < T. hudsonicus
  • Otospermophilus douglasii < O. beecheyi (exciting to learn that we have two different ground squirrel species in the Bay Area)
  • Spermophilus musicus < S. pygmaeus
  • Spermophilus nilkaensis < S. relictus
  • Spermophilus brevicauda, S. pallidicauda < S. erythrogenys
  • Xerospermophilus perotensis < X. spilosoma
• Genus changes
  • Petinomys sagitta -> Hylopetes sagitta
• New species
  • Tamiops minshanica

Sciuridae

Callosciurinae (MDD) vs. Nannosciurinae (Hesp) (-)

Nannosciurinae Forsyth Major, 1893, has priority over Callosciurinae Pocock, 1923. I have been sitting on this for a while but never got around to trying to publish it.

AI: Publish

Sciurus robinsoni alacris

This split (Sundasciurus robinsoni from S. lowii) is well-supported and I accept it. However, I noticed that Hinckley et al. (2020) list Sciurus robinsoni alacris Thomas, 1908, as a synonym of Sundasciurus robinsoni, but in my database it is under Rhinosciurus laticaudatus. MSW3, HMW, and MDD also list this name under Rhinosciurus laticaudatus. I think this is due to confusion between Sciurus robinsoni Bonhote, 1903, and Rhinosciurus robinsoni Thomas, 1908, two different and unrelated squirrels. In his original description, Thomas explicitly associates his new subspecies with Bonhote's name, and in Chasen (1940) it is listed as a synonym of Sciurus lowii robinsoni. I think somewhere along the line someone got confused and moved the name to Rhinosciurus. I haven't seen Corbet & Hill (1992) but maybe they have more pertinent information.

For now I'm moving alacris to Sundasciurus robinsoni and not recognizing any subspecies in Rhinosciurus laticudatus.

Genera of Sciurini (-)

MDD here follows the classical arrangement, with Sciurus including the Eurasian red squirrel and most American species, but Microsciurus and Syntheosciurus in separate genera. I instead follow the rearrangement by Abreu-Júnior's group (2020), which takes all American species out of Sciurus into numerous revalidated genera, and rearranges them together with Microsciurus and Syntheosciurus. This arrangement is similar to that of Vivo & Carmignotto (2015) in Mammals of South America but differs in details; some of their genera were not monophyletic.

Two arguments drove me to switch to the new classification:

• Sciurus and Microsciurus in the old classification were clearly not monophyletic, so it's good to attempt to fix the issue.
• The new arrangement (or variants of it) seems to have become widely accepted in the South American literature.

The biggest problem with this arrangement is that it leaves two species, Microsciurus flaviventer and M. sabanillae, stranded without a valid genus name. I currently have them unallocated to genus (which is why I had flaviventer revert to its original name, Macroxus flaviventer). In addition, Microsciurus santanderensis and Microsciurus simonsi have not yet been studied genetically. I left them in Microsciurus but the more conservative option would have been to also make them direct children of Sciurini. I think they may turn out to belong with Leptosciurus. Alternatively, we could leave all these species in Microsciurus until someone gets around to naming a new genus.

Another tricky case is Sciurus richmondi. I currently have it under Guerlinguetus which is clearly wrong. Abreu et al. (2020) had a single sample of richmondi and recovered it within Syntheosciurus granatensis, but in their discussion they said future work was needed before a taxonomic change could be made. For now I will recognize richmondi as a valid species of Syntheosciurus.

Personally I feel the new generic arrangement is oversplit; all Neotropical Sciurini or even all American Sciurini could have been put into a single genus, avoiding the problems with unallocated species. As discussed below, there are several cases where animals that were until recently placed in the same species are now placed in different genera, which suggests that the genera aren't easily differentiated morphologically. However, that's not what the literature proposed so I don't see it an option for the database. It would be a useful case to look at though if we do a broader study of genus definitions in mammals, as you suggested on the Primates thread.

On balance I think the reclassification should be accepted but with the uncertain species left in Microsciurus, given that old Sciurus is clearly nonmonophyletic and the classification has been broadly accepted in the literature. It's unfortunate that Microsciurus will remain diphyletic for now, but the new classification is still a clear improvement.

Microsciurus species (-)

Following Mammals of South America I recognize an additional six species among the species MDD allocates to Microsciurus:

• boquetensis and isthmius are split from mimulus and placed within Leptosciurus
• otinus and similis are split from flaviventer and placed within Leptosciurus, phylogenetically distant from true flaviventer (which is in the unnamed genus)
• simonsi is split from flaviventer, but left unallocated because there is no molecular data. Its geographic distribution west of the Andes would suggest it should go with Leptosciurus.
• sabanillae is split from flaviventer, but is sister to flaviventer (and an unnamed species) genetically.

Mammals of South America also recognizes venustulus as a species, split from alfari, but Abreu et al. (2020) found that it is nested within alfari, and I follow them in synonymizing venustulus with alfari.

I adopted these splits in my database because Mammals of South America is an authoritative reclassification that I felt would set a new baseline for the classification of this group. The molecular data of Abreu's group confirms at the very least that otinus and similis have nothing to do with flaviventer. Whether all of these species are really valid is more debatable; boquetensis and isthmius in particular seem quite close genetically.

Guerlinguetus species (-)

Among species in the "Guerlinguetus" group, I follow Mammals of South America in recognizing brasiliensis as distinct from aestuans, but synonymizing gilvigularis under aestuans.

Abreu's papers recognize brasiliensis as distinct from aestuans, but suggest that aestuans as currently recognized is composite. However, there is no support for gilvigularis as a different species.

There is clearly more work to be done here, but I think the aestuans/brasiliensis classification better reflects what we currently know about these squirrels.

Simosciurus species (-)

Here I follow Mammals of South America in splitting nebouxii from stramineus. Molecular data shows that these two are sister to each other but quite distinct, so this split seems well-supported.

Sciurus/Hadrosciurus flammifer (-)

I include Sciurus flammifer in Hadrosciurus igniventris following Mammals of South America.

Populations of flammifer (southern Venezuela) haven't been included in Abreu's molecular studies. I would follow the synonymy for now, but more confirmation is needed.

Sciurus/Hadrosciurus sanborni (-)

MDD has this species as valid, I put it in Hadrosciurus ignitus.

Mammals of South America included sanborni as a synonym of Notosciurus pucheranii boliviensis, but Abreu's work showed that pucheranii was composite: the nominotypical subspecies is related to some former Microsciurus and is now placed in Leptosciurus, while the other subspecies are within Hadrosciurus and are now recognized as Hadrosciurus ignitus. Thus, I now list sanborni as a synonym of Hadrosciurus ignitus boliviensis.

There doesn't appear to be molecular data for sanborni specifically (from the mountains of Peru). This is therefore a similar case to flammifer; I would recognize the synonymy for now.

Spermophilus alashanicus (MDD) vs. alaschanicus (Hesp) (-!)

Both spellings occur in the recent literature, but the original spelling is alaschanicus: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/56758096

Following #22, #23, #26, #27, this installment covers the insectivores. This was rather simpler than I expected, probably because I recently went over the HMW volume for insectivores. Still, there are some disagreements that merit further discussion.

Eulipotyphla

Straightforward accepted changes

• New mergers
  • Crocidura zaitsevi -> C. kegoensis
  • Crocidura batesi -> C. poensis
  • Crocidura negligens -> C. malayana
  • Sorex bairdi -> S. pacificus
  • Sorex neomexicanus -> S. monticolus
  • Sorex averini -> S. araneus
  • Sorex cristobalensis -> S. salvini
• New splits
  • Crocidura tadae < C. rapax
  • Nectogale sikhimensis < N. elegans
  • Sorex gomphus, S. nepalensis, S. wardi < S. bedfordiae
  • Sorex kozlovi < S. thibetanus (I was following HMW but will defer to you)
  • Sorex obscurus < S. monticolus
  • Euroscaptor ngoclinhensis < E. parvidens
  • Mogera hainana < M. insularis
• New species
  • Chodsigoa dabieshanensis
  • Uropsilus dabieshanensis
• Recently extinct species
  • Nesophontes 6 spp.
  • Solenodon arredondoi and S. marcanoi
• Spelling changes
  • Crocidura magnimana -> C. magnimanus (original description explicitly says it's an adjective)
  • Sorex camtschatica -> S. camtschaticus
  • Scaptonyx fusicaudus -> S. fusicauda

Articles not yet seen:

• Crocidura huangshanensis description should be at https://www.zootax.com.cn/CN/article/downloadArticleFile.do?attachType=PDF&id=259 but site is down, wait a bit and retry (also https://www.cnki.com.cn/Article/CJFDTotal-DWFL202001001.htm)
• Mogera hainana https://bioone.org/journals/mammal-study/volume-47/issue-1/ms2021-0008/New-Mitogenome-of-the-Hainan-Mole-Mogera-hainana-and-Taxonomic/10.3106/ms2021-0008.short

Eulipotyphla vs. Lipotyphla (+)

I haven't systematically looked for discrepancies in classification above the genus level, but noticed here that MDD has Eulipotyphla while I have Lipotyphla. I like Lipotyphla better because it is shorter and Asher & Helgen (2010) supported it, but Eulipotyphla seems to be the current consensus so I'll switch. Interestingly, a lot of the Russian literature uses Lipotyphla instead.

Ref: Asher, R.J. and Helgen, K.M. 2010. Nomenclature and placental mammal phylogeny. BMC Evolutionary Biology 10(102):1-9. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-10-102

Erinaceidae

Echinosorex gymnura vs. gymnurus (-)

MDD has gymnurus, I have gymnura, which is the traditional form.

The original combination was Viverra gymnura. If you interpret that as an adjective, then it should indeed be gymnurus in combination with masculine Echinosorex, but interpreting it as a noun in apposition would allow to preserve the prevailing spelling. However, Raffles writes gymnura in lowercase, which in his work is usually an indication that the specific name is an adjective.

AI: Confirm

Otohylomys megalotis (-!)

MDD places Hylomys megalotis in Hylomys without comments, I place it in the separate genus Otohylomys.

This was named by Bannikova et al. (2014) on the basis of solid molecular evidence.

Ref: Bannikova, A.A., Лебедев, В.С., Абрамов, А.В. and Рожнов, В.В. 2014-06-04. Contrasting evolutionary history of hedgehogs and gymnures (Mammalia: Erinaceomorpha) as inferred from a multigene study. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 112(3):499-519. doi:10.1111/bij.12299

Nesophontidae

Nesophontes paramicrus (+)

MDD recognizes Nesophontes paramicrus, I have it as a synonym of N. micrus.

Patterson (1962) and Rzebik-Kowalska & Wołoszyn (2012) suggested this synonymy, but it doesn't seem supported in the recent literature. I will accept the species.

Ref:

• Patterson, B. 1962. An extinct solenodontid insectivore from Hispaniola. Breviora 165:1-11.
• Rzebik-Kowalska, B. and Wołoszyn, B.W. 2012. New data on Nesophontes subfossil populations from Cuba and Isla de la Juventud (Cuba). Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie. Abhandlungen 263(2):155-166. doi:10.1127/0077-7749/2012/0220

Soricidae

Crocidura anselli vs. ansellorum, greenwoodi vs. greenwoodae (-)

Another two cases like Pteropus giliardi.

Crocidura dongyangjiangensis and C. huangshanensis (+)

I missed these two new species that have since been synonymized under dongyangjiangensis.

You have the year of description as 2020. I can't read Chinese but I'm pretty sure the second-to-last paragraph of the paper synonymizing them is saying dongyangjiangensis was published on 2019-12-26 and huangshanensis on 2020-01-15. I can't confirm these dates (the API I use for DOI dates apparently doesn't cover the Chinese ones), and at least the description of dongyangjiangensis doesn't have an LSID, so the print publication date is what matters, not the online one.

Crocidura tarfayaensis vs. tarfayensis (-)

MDD has tarfayensis, I have tarfayaensis.

My spelling is the original (I recently found the original description online and can share it if you like).

Both spellings occur in the recent literature, so I don't see any reason not to use the original spelling. The alternative spelling tarfayensis apparently goes back to Honacki et al. (1982).

AI: Confirm and publish

Chimarrogale vs. Crossogale (-)

MDD has Crossogale as a separate genus, I have it within Chimarrogale.

I also added this genus when I saw Abramov et al. (2017), but HMW (vol. 8, p. 336) refused to recognize the genus, saying it was "rushed". Looking back at Abramov et al. (2017) I don't think the evidence for this revision is very strong. They only have cytb data for C. phaeura (=Crossogale), but the combined genus Chimarrogale appears to be monophyletic. So I think HMW's decision is right here.

Episoriculus vs. Pseudosoriculus (-)

This is a similar case, where MDD recognizes the newly named genus Pseudosoriculus (split from Episoriculus), but I don't because I was following HMW.

However, the evidence for this one is much stronger than for Crossogale. There is data from three different genes showing Pseudosoriculus fumidus is phylogenetically distant from the rest of Episoriculus. I'll wait for your reply on both of these cases but I'm inclined to accept the genus as valid.

Sorex monticolus vs. S. monticola (-)

MDD has monticola (with comments saying it is a noun in apposition), I have monticolus.

If the original spelling was monticola I'd agree with you, but the original spelling is in fact monticolus. Woodman (2018) argues that the original spelling was in error and notes that Merriam later corrected it to monticola. However, such an emendation is justified only if it's in prevailing usage, and I don't think this one qualifies (e.g. Google Scholar has 39 hits for Sorex monticola and 912 for Sorex monticolus).

Suncus varilla vs. S. varillus (-)

MDD has varillus, I have varilla.

This was originally named in combination with Crocidura (feminine) but is now in Suncus (masculine).

This word doesn't appear in Latin dictionaries I have checked, but it sounds like an adjective to me (cf. the -illus suffix). However, since there is uncertainty it might be better to stick with the original spelling.

AI: Confirm

I just had a chance to read a newly published book on marsupials: https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-031-08419-5_32

The chapter on Australian species has one notable difference with our taxonomy: they recognize an additional five species in Murexia. Those are aspera, maxima, and murex split from longicaudata; wilhelmina split from melanura; and tafa split from naso. They cite Woolley et al. (2020), which is already cited in MDD. Woolley et al. do suggest that all these are valid species, but their statements aren't very definite. I think I'd prefer to wait for more definite evidence, but maybe this is enough to add the additional five species to MDD.

One other taxonomic decision in the book stood out to me: they recognize Petaurus papuanus for the New Guinea populations previously included in P. breviceps. That's the solution we also landed on in #27, so it's good to see some independent support.

The idea would be to display a very rough world map with the country highlighted would be an interesting output -- possibly via Google tools to make it a zoom-able map

I ran a script to compare Hesperomys against the latest release of the MDD: https://gist.github.com/JelleZijlstra/0bb7845fdf451ebaffe7878ee140fd21. There's a lot of harmless small differences (e.g., different transcriptions of Russian names), and also a lot of cases where my database is wrong, so I have some more work to do to get the list down to something more manageable.

However, here are a few things I noticed where MDD seems incorrect:

• Myotis gomantongensis: MDD gives the authority as "J. Edwards Hill & Francis", but the article is by Francis & Hill (in that order) and I don't see anything in the text to suggest the species should use a different authority order
• Hipposideros kunzi: MDD has one of the authors as "Zubaib", should be "Zubaid"
• Macronycteris cryptovalorona: author "Willos-Munro" should be "Willows-Munro"
• Cacajao ucayalii: MDD has an extra comma after the authority
• Microcebus griseorufus: author should be "Kollmann", not "Kollman"
• Microcebus macarthurii: MDD cuts off the last few authors, should be "Radespiel, Olivieri, Rasolofoson, Rakotondratsimba, Rakotonirainy, Rasoloharijaona, Randrianambinina, Ratsimbazafy, Ratelolahy, Randriamboavonjy, Rasolofoharivelo, Craul, Rakotozafy & Randrianarison"
• Mesomys leniceps: author should be O. Thomas & St. Leger, not just O. Thomas as MDD currently says (Thomasomys rosalinda was named in the same paper and MDD does have both names there)
• Cuniculus taczanowskii: author should be "Stolzmann" not "Stolzman"
• Phyllomys blainvilii: author should be "Jourdan" not "Jordan"
• Acomys muzei and Acomys ngurui authors should be "W. N. Verheyen, Hulselmans, Wendelen, Leirs, Corti, Backeljau & E. Verheyen" (MDD is currently missing the last few)
• Meriones hurrianae: author should be "Jerdon" not "Jordon" (though I haven't confirmed against the original description)
• Apomys lubangensis and Apomys iridensis: third author should be "Veluz" not "Veluz"
• Hylomyscus mpungamachagorum: authority should be "Demos, Hutterer & Kerbis Peterhans" (MDD reverses the order)
• Maxomys tajuddinii: last author should be "Maharadatunkamsi", not "Maharadantunkamsi" as in MDD
• Rattus detentus: authors should be just "Timm, Weijola, K. P. Aplin, Flannery, and Pine" (the paper had a few more authors, but these are listed explicitly as the authors of the name)

Original name

• Marmosops pakaraimae: original name should be pakaraimae not pakaraime
• Thylamys velutinus: original combination should be Didelphys velutina not Marmosa
• Dasyurus albopunctatus: original combination should be Dasyurus albopunctatus not Dasyuroides
• Dasyurus viverrinus: original combination should be Didelphis VIverrina not viverrinus
• Microperoryctes murina, Microperoryctes aplini, Peroryctes papuensis: MDD has a typo in the original name combination ("oyctes")
• Chiropotes utahicki: MDD has satanus instead of satanas in the original combination
• Dactylomys boliviensis: MDD has "bolviensis" in the original combination instead of boliviensis
• Spermophilus perotensis: MDD incorrectly has "Spermophlus" in the original combination
• Thamnomys venustus schoutedeni: MDD incorrectly has "Thamnonmys" in the original combination

Type specimen

• Marmosa simonsi: type should be 99.8.1.20 not 98.8.1.20
• Monodelphis pinocchio: holotype is in MN (Museo Nacional), not AMNH
• Murexia rothschildi: type should be BMNH 1939.3233 (fide Van Dyck 2000), not AMNH 108106 which is the paratype
• Crocidura panayensis: collection code should be ZFMK not ZMFK (it stands for Zoologisches Forschungs-Museum Alexander König). A number of other names have the same issue.
• Surdisorex polulus: type should be USNM 163992, not 163922 (I checked the USNM database and 163922 is a Procavia)
• Alces alces: MDD lists ROM 20068 as the type, but this is in fact the type of the nominal subspecies Alces americana andersoni R.L. Peterson, 1950.

There's a lot more I haven't looked at in depth yet. These are mostly very nitpicky issues, so let me know if you'd rather I don't file these.

On the taxa page (https://mammaldiversity.github.io/taxa.html), make the column be “Living species” and then an adjacent column for “Extinct species (last 500 yrs)” — this would involve parsing the current “extinct?” column (now “extinct”) and summarizing that information

Also then on the per-species permalink pages, add the fields for
extinct domestic flagged newSppSinceMSW3

For now as 0/1 data but we could imagine forming a sentence from this, e.g., “This species is (living / extinct in the last 500 years), they live in (wild / domestic) habitats, their taxonomic status is (accepted / flagged), and they (are newly recognized since / we already recognized in) MSW3 2005.”

I brought up references related to Muntiacus aureus in #22 and it was added to the MDD, but I think this was probably a mistake.

First, the name aureus is not applicable to the supposed species, as the MDD's own comments hint at (https://www.mammaldiversity.org/explore.html#genus=Muntiacus&species=aureus&id=1006743). Muntiacus aureus is supposed to occur in the Himalayas of northwestern India, and the type locality of aureus is thought to be in southern India. Groves (2003) used the name Muntiacus vaginalis aureus for a subspecies that occurs "From Kumaun and Kheri, southeast to the Deccan." Kumaun (=Kumaon) is in the putative range of Muntiacus aureus, but the Deccan definitely is not. B. Singh et al. (2021) do not discuss why they think the name aureus is applicable to the Himalayan species. Groves & Grubb (2011) use the name Muntiacus aureus at the species level, but their concept of the species does not match that in B. Singh et al. (2021).

Second, the evidence that this species is separate from the widespread Muntiacus vaginalis is weak. B. Singh et al. (2021) found them to be separate based on whole mitochondrial genomes, but V.K. Singh et al. (2022) used microsatellites in addition to Cytb and found Muntiacus vaginalis to be paraphyletic with respect to the western Himalayan population. They did not mention the name aureus.

Given that "Muntiacus aureus" is likely not an applicable name and the distinction between this species and its closest relative is weak and based only on mtDNA, I recommend removing the species from the MDD.

References:

• Groves, C.P. 2003. Taxonomy of ungulates of the Indian subcontinent. Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 100(2-3):341-362.
• Groves, C.P. and Grubb, P. 2011. Ungulate Taxonomy. Johns Hopkins University Press, 309 pp.
• Singh, B., Kumar, A., Uniyal, V.P. and Gupta, S.K. 2021. Phylogeography and population genetic structure of red muntjacs: evidence of enigmatic Himalayan red muntjac from India. BMC Ecology and Evolution 21(1):1-15. doi:10.1186/s12862-021-01780-2
• Singh, V.K., Joshi, B.D., Singh, A., Singh, S.K., Chandra, K., Sharma, L.K. and Thakur, M. 2022. Genetic diversity and population structure of the northern red muntjac (Muntiacus vaginalis) in Indian Himalayan region. Mammalian Biology 102(2):537-544. doi:10.1007/s42991-022-00254-2

From Link Olson:
"1) When I do a search and click on any result, the search field remains at the top of the page but is apparently nonfunctional; I have to re-load the main page to initiate a new search.

2. Searches don't seem to search all fields. E.g., a search of "miurus" brings up Calomys miurus but not Microtus abbreviatus, which includes mention of "miurus" as its junior synonym. My preference would be for any record with any occurrences of the search term pop up in the search results, and I suspect I'm in plentiful (if not necessarily good) company on that. Thoughts?"

Conversation with @JelleZijlstra, Connor Burgin, and @n8upham (Jan 22, 2023):

Carnivora

Straightforward accepted changes:

New mergers
Eupleres major -> E. goudotii
Galidictis grandidieri -> G. fasciata
Salanoia durrelli -> S. concolor
Mustela subpalmata -> M. nivalis
Arctophoca -> Arctocephalus
Nasuella meridensis -> Nasua olivacea
Nasuella -> Nasua
New splits
Ailurus styani < A. fulgens
Nyctereutes viverrinus < N. procyonoides
Doesn't affect the species list but I'm skeptical about the subspecies albus for Hokkaido. It was apparently named twice in 1904 by two different authors (not clear which was first), one said to come from Nagasaki and the other from Hokkaido.
Leopardus emiliae < L. tigrinus
Bdeogale omnivora < B. crassicauda
Proteles septentrionalis < P. cristatus
Melogale subaurantiaca < M. moschata
Neogale < Mustela
Recently extinct species omitted from my database export
Dusicyon avus (though I am surprised to learn it went extinct in the last 500 years; found a reference establishing that it did in the IUCN account)
Cryptoprocta spelea
I don't think there's evidence this species lived past 1500 so it might not belong in the MDD, though it is on the Red List. I'm personally also somewhat skeptical it's really distinct, since it is diagnosed purely on the basis of size.
Other changes
Leopardus fasciatus is a senior synonym of L. munoai
Canidae

Canis lycaon (+)

MDD recognizes this species; I don't. I have some misgivings about this because the cited source shows that C. lycaon are essentially just C. lupus with some hybrid coyote ancestry, but I'll accept it.

Lycalopex spelling (-)

I treat Lycalopex as feminine and consequently use the specific epithets grisea, gymnocerca, and vetula. MDD uses names in -us instead.

Lycalopex derives from the Greek ἀλώπηξ alôpêx "fox", which is feminine (LSJ).

The specific epithets griseus ("gray") and vetulus ("elderly") are definitely adjectives, so they should change with the gender of the genus; gymnocercus ("naked-tailed") could conceivably be interpreted as a noun in apposition instead to preserve the original form.

AI: Confirm the specific epithet changes are right and publish.

Herpestidae

Galerella vs. Herpestes (-)

MDD synonymizes Galerella under Herpestes based on an mtDNA study that found Galerella to be paraphyletic. The decision is probably right, but I would prefer to wait for a peer-reviewed reference that explicitly makes the suggestion.

Urva spelling (+/-)

Three differences:

MDD fusca vs. Hesp fuscus
MDD javanica vs. Hesp javanicus
MDD vitticolla vs. Hesp vitticollis
The generic name is feminine, so in the first two Hesperomys is wrong and I will correct it.

However, vitticollis is a third-declension adjective and the feminine form is also vitticollis. Urva vitticollis is right.

Mustelidae

Ictonyx vs. Poecilictis (+)

I recognize Poecilictis as a genus; MDD includes it in Ictonyx. I may have done this because Koepfli et al. (2008) found Ictonyx to be paraphyletic, but that goes against my own admonition to avoid making changes that haven't been explicitly proposed. I am synonymizing the two. Ref: Koepfli, K.-P., Deere, K.A., Slater, G.J., Begg, C., Begg, K., Grassman, L., Lucherini, M., Veron, G. and Wayne, R.K. 2008. Multigene phylogeny of the Mustelidae: Resolving relationships, tempo and biogeographic history of a mammalian adaptive radiation. BMC Biology 6(10):1-22. doi:10.1186/1741-7007-6-10

The spelling comment in MDD seems wrong: libyca is definitely an adjective, not a noun.

Lutra and related genera (+)

MDD accepts a recent proposal to lump Lutrogale, Amblonyx, and Aonyx into Lutra. This is a rather invasive change. It creates at least two homonymies among fossil species (robusta and indica). There are a couple of fossil genera closely related to Lutra that perhaps should also be synonymized (Algarolutra, Lutraeximia, Sardolutra). However, I will accept the change as I like reducing the number of (nearly) monotypic genera.

Mustela strigodorsa vs. strigidorsa (+)

The original spelling is in fact strigodorsa, but virtually nobody has used that spelling since. The form strigidorsa can probably be declared a justified emendation through prevailing usage.

AI: Confirm this and publish it.

Phocidae

Lobodon carcinophaga vs. carcinophagus (+)

I have carcinophagus (interpreting the epithet as an adjective agreeing in gender with masculine Lobodon), MDD has carcinophaga, interpreting the name as a noun in apposition. Rice (1998) argued that it was a noun in apposition. I am skeptical this is what the original authors intended, but it's not worth disturbing the established nomenclature, and I'll switch to carcinophaga.

Viverridae

Genetta fieldiana vs. maculata (-!)

The name Genetta maculata was explicitly rejected by the ICZN because it was preoccupied by Viverra maculata Kerr = Dasyurus maculatus.

This was a rather complex nomenclatural situation, with a neotype designation and significant disagreement among authors who commented on the ICZN application. But the name maculata is definitely invalid, and fieldiana appears to be the oldest available name for the species, as Grubb (2004) called out.

Ref:

Grubb, P. 2004. Comment on the proposed conservation of Viverra maculata Gray, 1830 (currently Genetta maculata; Mammalia, Carnivora). Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 61(2):119-122.
International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. 2007. Opinion 2183 (Case 3204). Viverra maculata Gray, 1830 (currently Genetta maculata; Mammalia, Carnivora): specific name not conserved. Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 64(3):205-206.
Paradoxurus (+/-)

Three differences:

MDD adds two species, P. musangus and P. philippinensis
MDD uses the spelling musangus, I use musanga (for a subspecies at the moment)
MDD calls the Sri Lanka golden palm civet zeylonensis, I use aureus
I accept change (1) to add the two species recognized by Veron et al. (2014).

For (2), MDD comments say that musanga is an adjective and therefore should agree in gender with the species name. But it's clearly not a classical Latin adjective. Raffles (1821), who named this species, writes that the Malay name of the animal is "Musang bulan", so he must have slightly Latinized that name by adding -a to create the scientific name. The name sounds like a noun in apposition to me. The previous name on the page is Viverra genetta, another similar noun in apposition. (I wonder what he meant by that, as Genetta doesn't occur on Sumatra. Maybe Viverricula?)

For (3), I base myself on Groves et al. (2009, p. 249). Their main conclusion (that there are three species of golden palm civets on Sri Lanka) has been rejected, but I haven't seen any reason to doubt their argument that the name zeylonensis was more likely based on a common palm civet (P. hermaphroditus), which also occurs on Sri Lanka. That leaves aureus as the oldest name for the golden palm civet.

Continuing #22, #23, #26, #27, #28 with a number of small orders. There are a number of spelling issues, and some taxonomic disagreements in the lagomorphs.

Hyracoidea

Straightforward accepted changes:

• New splits
  • Dendrohyrax validus < D. arboreus (minor: MDD has a typo in the comment, "form" for "from", and is missing page numbers for the Mammals of Africa reference, should be 158–161)

Relatedly, I noticed that there is a subspecies Dendrohyrax arboreus mimus recognized by Mammals of Africa; MDD also lists mimus as a synonym for arboreus. However, the original name was Procavia mima, and I believe it is a noun in apposition because there is no Latin adjective mimus. Therefore, the correct combination is Dendrohyrax arboreus mima.

Lagomorpha

Straightforward accepted changes:

• New splits
  • Lepus altamirae < L. californicus
  • Pronolagus saundersiae < P. rupestris
  • Sylvilagus holzneri < S. floridanus
  • Ochotona argentata < O. pallasii
  • Ochotona vizier < O. rufescens
  • Ochotona qionglaiensis < O. thibetana
  • Ochotona turuchanensis < O. alpina
• New mergers
  • Sylvilagus cognatus, S. robustus -> S. holzneri
  • Ochotona gloveri -> O. erythrotis
  • Ochotona morosa -> O. cansus
  • Ochotona fengii -> O. thibetana
• Other taxonomic changes
  • Brachylagus idahoensis -> Sylvilagus idahoensis
• Spelling changes
  • Ochotona roylei -> O. roylii
• Recently extinct species
  • Prolagus sardus

Leporidae

Lepus microtis vs. L. victoriae (-)

I use Lepus microtis (agreeing with MSW 3), MDD uses Lepus victoriae (agreeing with HMW and Mammals of Africa).

MDD acknowledges that microtis is older but retains victoriae because it was used in previous publications and because microtis is a nomen nudum. I looked at the original description of microtis and it is definitely not a nomen nudum; Heuglin gives a thorough description that runs for about a page. The holotype is still in existence in Stuttgart. I don't find the argument that victoriae is in common usage particularly convincing either, since MSW3 used microtis and the species has previously been known under various other names.

Ochotonidae

Ochotona dabashanensis and O. xunhuaensis (-!)

I have these two as valid species, MDD synonymizes them under Ochotona sikimaria.

MDD cites Wang et al. (2020), but their tree places Ochotona sikimaria distant (within subgenus Ochotona) from dabashanensis and xunhuaensis (within subgenus Alienauroa, sister to O. sacraria). Therefore, I don't think synonymy with sikimaria is supported by the sources. However, a case could be made for synonymizing xunhuaensis and dabashanensis, as they are not reciprocally monophyletic; xunhuaensis would have priority.

Prolagidae

MDD puts Prolagus in its own family Prolagidae; I place it within Ochotonidae.

There is little hard evidence here (nobody seems to have gotten aDNA for Prolagus yet, for one), but the western European paleontological literature mostly keeps Prolagus within Ochotonidae. The most explicit discussion is in Angelone et al. (2014). However, Russian authors tend to follow Erbajeva and recognize the family Prolagidae. Prolagus apparently has a long independent history, going back into the Oligocene.

This is entirely a subjective question; I chose to put Prolagus within Ochotonidae because that's what almost all recent papers discussing it do. (Prolagus is a fairly common fossil in the Miocene and Pliocene of Europe.)

Ref: Angelone, C., Prieto, J. and Gross, M. 2014. Complement to the study of the pikas (Lagomorpha, Ochotonidae) from the Middle Miocene of Gratkorn, Austria. Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments 94(1):125-134. doi:10.1007/s12549-013-0146-4

Microbiotheria

I accept the reclassification of Dromiciops into two species.

(Nothing to discuss in Macroscelidea, Monotremata, Notoryctemorphia, and Paucituberculata.)

Peramelemorphia

Straightforward accepted changes

• Recently extinct species
  • Chaeropus ecaudatus
  • Chaeropus yirratji
  • Macrotis leucura
• New splits
  • Isoodon peninsulae and I. auratus < I. obesulus
• New mergers
  • Microperoryctes ornata -> M. longicauda (though I'd cite HMW instead of the Red List)

Peramelidae

Microperoryctes/Peroryctes spelling (-/+)

There are a few discrepancies around gender agreement in Microperoryctes and Peroryctes:

• Hesp Microperoryctes longicaudus vs. MDD longicauda
• Hesp Microperoryctes murinus vs. MDD murina
• Hesp Peroryctes raffrayanus vs. MDD raffrayana

The generic names come from Greek ὀρύκτης oryktes "digger", which is masculine. Other similar names in extant mammals, like Notoryctes, Tachyoryctes, and Oryzorictes are consistently treated as masculine. Indeed, when Thomas named Peroryctes, he listed the type species as "P. raffrayanus". However, when Stein named Microperoryctes he used the feminine murina.

I think longicauda is reasonably interpreted as a noun in apposition, so I'm going to change back to MDD's term. However, the other two are clearly adjectives and I believe the masculine form is correct.

AI: Confirm and publish

Perissodactyla

Straightforward accepted changes

• New mergers
  • Equus burchellii -> E. quagga
  • Equus onager -> E. hemionus
  • Ceratotherium cottoni -> C. simum

Pholidota

Manidae

Phataginus tetradactylus vs. tetradactyla (-)

MDD has tetradactyla, I have tetradactylus.

Phataginus is a masculine name, tetradactyla is an adjective, so the name should agree in gender with the genus. (Compare Cyclopes didactylus, which was originally Myrmecophaga didactyla.)

AI: Confirm and publish

Pilosa

Straightforward accepted changes

• New splits
  • Bradypus crinitus < B. torquatus

I have started comparing the type specimen lists in the MDD and Hesperomys. Here I'll list cases where MDD has a clear typo or minor mistake. These should hopefully all be straightforward to address.

• ANSP 6619 (MDD) vs. ANSP 6618 (Hesperomys) (MDD#1006535; Glossophaga antillarum; original citation: Rehn (1902); type_specimen)
  • Koopman, K.F. 1976. Catalog of type specimens of Recent mammals in the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 128:1-24. JSTOR 4064715: "The type was designated as #6619 by Rehn, but this is surely a typographical error since the latter number is of an Artibeus and 6618 is given as the type in the catalog."
  • Action: change type of Glossophaga antillarum to ANSP 6618
• AMNH 21156 (MDD) vs. AMNH 211156 (Hesperomys) (MDD#1005438; Myotis midastactus; original citation: Moratelli & Wilson (2014); type_specimen)
  • 211156 is in the original description and one other source
  • Action: change type of Myotis midastactus to AMNH 211156
• AMNH 257618 (MDD) vs. AMNH 275618 (Hesperomys) (MDD#1003696; Tonkinomys daovantieni; original citation: Musser et al. (2006); type_specimen)
  • Confirmed in original description
  • Action: change type of Tonkinomys daovantieni to AMNH 275618
• AMNH 58909 (MDD) vs. AMNH 85909 (Hesperomys) (MDD#1003726; Dendromus vernayi; original citation: Hill & Carter (1937); type_specimen)
  • Confirmed in original description and AMNH type catalog
  • Action: change type of Dendromus vernayi to AMNH 85909
• Emmons, L. H., & Fabre, P. H. (2018). A review of the Pattonomys/Toromys clade (Rodentia: Echimyidae), with descriptions of a new Toromys species and a new genus. American Museum Novitates, 2018(3894), 1-52. (MDD) vs. FMNH 55483 (Hesperomys) (MDD#1001441; Toromys albiventris; original citation: Emmons & Fabre (2018); type_specimen)
  • You put the original citation in the type specimen field
  • Action: change type of Toromys albiventris to FMNH 55483
• MSNG 13313 (MDD) vs. MSNG 31313 (Hesperomys) (MDD#1004558; Asellia patrizii; original citation: De Beaux (1931); type_specimen)
  • Confirmed in original citation and one other source
  • Action: change type of Asellia patrizii to MSNG 13313
• CTUA 11012 (MDD) vs. MUA 11011 (Hesperomys) (MDD#1004793; Saccopteryx antioquensis; original citation: Muñoz & Cuartas-Calle (2001); type_specimen)
  • Confirmed 11011 is the number in the original description. No strong opinion on CTUA vs. MUA as the abbreviation.
  • Action: change type of Saccopteryx antioquensis to CTUA 11011
• AMNH 78680 [holotype] (MDD) vs. MN 78680 (Hesperomys) (MDD#1000077; Monodelphis pinocchio; original citation: Pavan (2015); type_specimen)
  • Confirmed in the original citation and a later piece by Voss
  • Action: change type of Monodelphis pinocchio to MN 78680
• MCZ 10988 (MDD) vs. MCZ 10980 (Hesperomys) (MDD#1005475; Myotis sodalis; original citation: Miller & Allen (1928); type_specimen)
  • The online catalog notes that the 2001 MCZ type catalog incorrectly listed 10988 as the type: https://mczbase.mcz.harvard.edu/guid/MCZ:Mamm:10980 There is a scan of the written catalog which confirms that 10980 was marked as the type at the time.
  • Action: change type of Myotis sodalis to MCZ 10980
• MVZ 51142 (MDD) vs. MVZ 51142a (Hesperomys) (MDD#1004248; Sorex jacksoni; type_specimen)
  • Csuti, B. 1980. Type specimens of recent mammals in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley. University of California Publications in Zoology 114:1-75. URL: https://books.google.com/books?id=c4y5-H4O8FUC: 'Due to an error in cataloging, a series of 10 numbers was used twice. The second series of 10, including this type, were given the suffix "a."'
  • Action: change type of Sorex jacksoni to MVZ 51142a
• NMZB 33652 (MDD) vs. NMZB 33647 (Hesperomys) (MDD#1004747; Rhinolophus smithersi; original citation: Taylor et al. (2012); type_specimen)
  • Confirmed in the original description. 33647 is the holotype, 33652 is a paratype.
  • Action: change type of Rhinolophus smithersi to NMZB 33647
• ZMFK 2003.1091 (MDD) vs. ZFMK 2003.1091 (Hesperomys) (MDD#1003978; Crocidura panayensis; original citation: Hutterer (2007); type_specimen)
• ZMFK 68.7 (MDD) vs. ZFMK 68.7 (Hesperomys) (MDD#1003481; Praomys hartwigi; original citation: Eisentraut (1968); type_specimen)
• ZMFK 69.375 (MDD) vs. ZFMK 69.375 (Hesperomys) (MDD#1004104; Myosorex rumpii; original citation: Heim de Balsac (1968); type_specimen)
• ZMFK 69.376 (MDD) vs. ZFMK 69.376 (Hesperomys) (MDD#1004103; Myosorex okuensis; original citation: Heim de Balsac (1968); type_specimen)
• ZMFK 69.731 (MDD) vs. ZFMK 69.731 (Hesperomys) (MDD#1003450; Hylomyscus grandis; original citation: Eisentraut (1969); type_specimen)
• ZMFK 79.370 (MDD) vs. ZFMK 79.370 (Hesperomys) (MDD#1002611; Nesoryzomys fernandinae; original citation: Hutterer & Hirsch (1980); type_specimen)
• ZMFK 88.115 (MDD) vs. ZFMK 88.115 (Hesperomys) (MDD#1003488; Praomys obscurus; original citation: Hutterer et al. (1992); type_specimen)
• ZMFK 92.384 (MDD) vs. ZFMK 92.384 (Hesperomys) (MDD#1001496; Octodon pacificus; original citation: Hutterer (1994); type_specimen)
  • For all of those, MDD has a typo in the collection abbreviation. It should be ZFMK for _Z_oologisches _F_orschungs-_M_useum Alexander _K_önig. It's listed correctly in the TypeSpecimenMetadata spreadsheet that comes with the MDD.
  • Action: change all "ZMFK" to "ZFMK"